Buterin stated that the Ethereum protocol needs to be more concise.

In this tweet, Vitalik Buterin redefines what "trustless" means in the context of blockchain. The Ethereum co-founder claims that protocols must be more concise.

Striving for Simplicity

In the cryptocurrency space, the motto is "Don't trust, verify." You shouldn't trust banks or governments; you should trust the code.

However, Buterin points out a flaw in this logic: if the code is so complex that no single person can understand it, then you are not actually verifying it. Instead, you are forced to trust a handful of genius developers or auditors who claim to understand the code.

Ethereum has become so large and complex that very few people can understand the entire protocol from start to finish.

When the learning curve of a system is too steep and knowledge is concentrated in the hands of a few, it creates centralization risks. This leads to a developer elite class, while others can only follow blindly.

Buterin believes that for the network to be truly decentralized, the threshold for understanding it must be very low.

If the protocol is simple and easy to understand, more people can audit the code, discover bugs, and propose improvements.

Buterin supports following the approach of tinygrad, a deep learning framework known for its strict control over the number of lines of code. Its philosophy is: limitations bring clarity.

He hopes the protocol will be concise enough that a capable person can keep the entire mental model in mind at once.