Vitalik Calls for Ethereum to Build 'Sanctuary Technologies'
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stated that there has been widespread concern within the community over government surveillance, corporate power, and AI issues over the past year, while Ethereum's role in improving people's freedom, privacy, and community self-organization has been limited.
Vitalik suggested that Ethereum should position itself as part of the "sanctuary technologies" ecosystem, creating open-source tools to help people establish digital stable islands in chaotic times, achieving decentralized collaboration and risk management, rather than attempting to completely reshape the world or being confined to the financial sector.
In market mechanisms, idealistic developers and institutions are accelerating their shift towards building a full-stack open-source ecosystem resistant to external pressures, with funding and talent flowing from pure financial narratives to privacy, communication, and decentralized infrastructure. This perspective is driving capital towards Ethereum full-stack projects, benefiting similar "sanctuary" technologies like Starlink and Signal, while centralized products face pressure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Vitalik has previously discussed Ethereum's "soul binding" and decentralized identity multiple times from 2022 to 2023. This concept of "sanctuary technologies" continues his long-standing advocacy for "Ethereum as a neutral digital space," emphasizing technological neutrality to address regulatory and geopolitical risks after The Merge.
In terms of capital pathways, the Ethereum Foundation and core developers are directing resources downwards towards OS/hardware layers and upwards to AI interface wallets through protocol funding and Layer 2 ecosystem funds, motivated by the goal of building an unweaponizable digital interdependence structure, reducing the likelihood of a single entity controlling all human activities.
Similar cases include early Bitcoin as "digital gold" providing financial refuge, and the user growth of Signal and Tor in the age of surveillance. The current crypto industry is transitioning from a finance-dominated model to a full-stack sanctuary technology phase, with thought leaders like Vitalik pushing for a consensus shift from efficiency optimization to resilience prioritization.
Essentially, this represents a technological substitution: centralized platforms that achieve total control through data and algorithms are being replaced by decentralized "digital spaces." The root of this mechanism is the sharply rising risk of power concentration in the AI era, where only shared infrastructure that cannot be owned or singularly controlled can lower the stakes of the "war in heaven" and achieve de-totalization and digital island stability.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Technology is not a weapon to conquer the world, but rather the building blocks for constructing sanctuaries. Financial freedom is important, but sanctuary technologies determine whether you can maintain digital sovereignty in chaotic times. De-totalization is not an escape, but a means to ensure that no victor can achieve total control.