Vitalik Buterin's new look "Speaking out against FTX": Ethereum is the complete opposite of them, the meaning of Blockchain is that you don't need to trust anyone.

Vitalik Buterin criticized FTX at Devconnect, reiterating Ethereum's “impossible to be evil” trust framework and examining the real challenges of decentralized practices. (Background: V God and the Ethereum Foundation issued the “Trustless Declaration”: If decentralization is sacrificed, blockchain is just an empty shell.) (Supplementary: V God warned that “ZK is not a panacea”: Anti-coercion needs to be accompanied by MPC, FHE, TEE, and other multilayer architectures.) At the Devconnect conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in November, as the stage lights had not yet dimmed, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin pointed directly at the now-bankrupt FTX, throwing out the core question at the outset: Should the crypto world trust the centralized commitment of “don't be evil” or build a decentralized mechanism that is “impossible to be evil”? V God appeared with a new look and vigorously criticized FTX. Buterin pointed out that FTX once positioned itself with a Google-like “don't be evil” stance and used altruism as a promotional slogan, but in reality, it required investors to hand over both assets and trust to a few top executives. Once the moral barrier collapsed, the black box immediately backfired. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried secretly misappropriated nearly $10 billion of customer funds to bail out Alameda and was ultimately sentenced to 25 years after being found guilty of seven counts of fraud and money laundering. This collapse not only shattered an exchange but also undermined the entire industry's trust in centralized platforms. FTX's power structure is a typical “hub-and-spoke” model: all decisions converge on a few people, and the outside world cannot verify the flow of funds. Buterin described that when trust is built on human nature rather than code, betrayal is just a matter of time. FTX… I believe it perfectly illustrates what you would get if you completely turned Ethereum's principles 180 degrees, so, to summarize Ethereum in one sentence: it is not this. Each cycle we unlock a new Vitalik & we love them all pic.twitter.com/gjIl1c06Kd — Uttam (@uttam_singhk) November 16, 2025 The design logic of “impossible to be evil” Buterin emphasized that, in contrast to FTX, Ethereum technically excludes single points of control. The code is open, the proposal process is transparent, and the community determines the upgrade direction through consensus. Buterin and the research team proposed three major laws in the “Trustless Declaration”: no key secrets, no indispensable intermediaries, and no unverifiable results. The declaration reminds: “Any shortcut based on a trust assumption will ultimately pay the price of freedom… The meaning of decentralized technology and blockchain lies in the fact that you do not have to trust them.” After FTX's collapse, the trading volume of decentralized exchange (DEX) soared; Ethena USDe fluctuated violently on Binance, yet remained relatively stable on DEXs like Curve, Fluid, and Uniswap, confirming the resilience of decentralized price discovery. Buterin thus advocated that Ethereum should be seen as a global financial public infrastructure, especially in economically turbulent areas like Argentina, where it is expected to provide a digital banking prototype for on-demand use. don’t be sbf, be vitalik ethereum pic.twitter.com/Ctvo23VUI5 — rip.eth (@ripeth) November 17, 2025 Decentralization still has concentration concerns Buterin also mentioned the differences between companies and communities, as there remains a gap between ideals and reality. Research shows that in major Ethereum DAOs, 0.3% of wallets control 95% of voting power. A fee proposal from Uniswap received 68% support, but 80% of the voting volume came from only 12 large addresses, reflecting that power may once again concentrate. In addition, over-reliance on a few RPC endpoints and infrastructure providers also exposes “decentralization” to the risk of contraction. To this end, the community is promoting the vision of “Lean Ethereum,” reducing the core of the protocol to the minimum operational components, and hopes to create a safe buffer between compliance and openness through the Ethereum Protocol Advocacy Alliance and dialogue with regulators. The difference between companies and communities lies in the structure: companies have a centralized structure; there is a physical entity responsible for operations and revenue. In contrast, communities are composed of numerous individuals helping each other. The long-term tug-of-war of the trust framework FTX's failure is a case of “transparent tyranny”: the outside world cannot see the inside, and the oversight mechanism has vanished; fraud could spread until the system collapsed. While Ethereum is not perfect, its concentration of power is at least visible and challengeable. The distinction between the two models lies in governance structure—the former relies on closed organizations and moral self-discipline, while the latter depends on open algorithms and community checks and balances. Buterin hopes to bring the “philosophy of trust” back into public discussion at Devconnect, as the centralized black box has proven its risks with real money; decentralization needs to continually self-correct to prevent new forms of concentration. The next chapter of the crypto industry may depend on whether this trust revolution can forge “impossible to be evil” from a slogan into a system. Related reports Ethereum faces backlash “V God praises Polygon” to quell: significant contributions to ZK, not just boring finance V God writes long article: GKR cryptographic protocol can quickly prove Ethereum, zk-ML is accelerating AI LLM V God calls Fusaka upgrade super important: PeerDAS reduces storage requirements by 90%, significantly reducing network restrictions. This article was first published on BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.