PANews reported on January 26 that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated in an article on the X platform that he no longer agrees with his 2017 assertion that “ordinary users verifying the entire history of the system is a bizarre ‘mountain man’ fantasy.” He explained that he made this assertion at the time to refute the proposal that “blockchain only needs to record the order of transactions and not the state,” because the latter would force users to rely on only a single data source.
His shift in perspective stemmed from two core reasons: First, breakthroughs in technologies like ZK-SNARKs enabled users to efficiently verify the chain state without re-executing all transactions, significantly reducing the cost of self-verification. Second, he gained a deeper understanding of the complexities of the real world, including network risks, service disruptions, and potential threats of attacks and censorship.
Therefore, a blockchain system aiming for long-term self-custody must provide users with a reliable and trustless “fallback”—the self-verification capability metaphorically represented by the “Mountain Hut.” He emphasized that maintaining this capability is not about advocating for daily use, but about ensuring its availability during crises, serving as the cornerstone for enhancing the resilience of the entire system and user autonomy.
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