Vitalik Says Ethereum Must Pass "Walkaway Test" to Ensure Long-Term Autonomous Operation

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote on Jan. 12 that the network must eventually pass a "Walkaway Test," meaning it can continue running securely and in a decentralized way over the long term even without ongoing core development or maintenance, BlockBeats reports. He outlined Ethereum's mission as providing trustless infrastructure for applications in finance, governance and other sectors, where deployed applications behave more like tools than services and remain usable even if original developers stop maintaining them. To reach this stage, Vitalik listed several key goals including full quantum resistance with century-level cryptographic security, sustainably scalable architecture via ZK-EVM verification and PeerDAS data sampling, a state architecture that can operate for decades using partial statelessness and state expiry, a universal account model with full account abstraction, a gas pricing model resistant to DoS while reflecting execution and ZK proving costs, a PoS economic design that keeps Ethereum decentralized while supporting ETH as a trustless collateral asset, and block construction mechanisms that resist centralization and censorship. He added these "hard engineering" items should be systematically completed in the coming years so most innovation can move to client-level optimization and parameter changes at the protocol layer, concluding with the phrase "Ethereum goes hard. This is the gwei."