# @VitalikButerin: building cypherpunk principled Ethereum as bolt-on layer

Source: https://xcancel.com/vitalikbuterin/status/2024881621749649855
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/VitalikButerin-building-cypherpunk-principled-Ethereum-as-bolt-on-layer?index=0x699a513bf9624ed8c362f2c78933093935617915e9fe08346226556e6430806c4563b43b
Submitted by misha on 2026-02-22 UTC, 1 upvote, 1 comment

## Summary

Vitalik Buterin describes an ambitious plan to build a "cypherpunk principled non-ugly ethereum" as a bolt-on layer to the current Ethereum system, integrated and interoperable with it and grown over time. He says Ethereum itself should also gain system-wide properties such as censorship resistance, zk prover friendliness and consensus properties. He estimates that within five years, or possibly much sooner with AI coding and verification, an open pathway could exist to turn the existing system into smart contracts written in the new system's language. He notes that Ethereum has already changed course mid-flight once with the Merge, and says it can make about four more such changes, listing the state tree, Lean consensus, ZK-EVM verification and a VM change.

## Article

I'm actually trying to do something even more ambitious:

Create "cypherpunk principled non-ugly ethereum" as a bolt-on to the present-day system, in a way that's as tightly integrated and interoperable as possible, and then grow it over time, in the mean time making sure ethereum itself gains the cypherpunk and simplicity properties that just necessarily have to be system-wide (eg. censorship resistance, zk prover friendliness, consensus properties). Then, in 5 years (or maybe way sooner with AI coding and verification, who knows), we have an open pathway to turn the existing system into smart contracts written in the language of the new system if/when we want.

Ethereum has already made jet engine changes in-flight once (the merge), we can do it ~4 times more!

(state tree, Lean consensus, ZK-EVM verification, VM change)

## Comments

**misha**: Vitalik is on the verge of taking over Kiwi lol