Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin (비탈릭 부테린) has publicly set out his intent to build “cypherpunk Ethereum” that achieves both censorship resistance and technical simplification while maintaining the current Ethereum ecosystem, The Block reported on Thursday.

Buterin recently said on social media platform X that he would integrate Ethereum with cypherpunk principles into the current system and expand it gradually. His idea is to internalise properties that must be applied across the system, including censorship resistance, zero-knowledge proof friendliness and consensus characteristics, within Ethereum itself.

As a first concrete step aligned with that direction, Ethereum developers last week confirmed they will include the FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists) mechanism in the Hegota hard fork planned for end-2026. Under FOCIL, an Ethereum validator committee forces the inclusion of all transactions in blocks, including transactions that violate sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Buterin also highlighted the combined effect with Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 8141, an account abstraction upgrade. He said it would allow smart wallets and privacy protocol transactions to be processed directly without an intermediary.

The Ethereum Foundation set three protocol priorities for 2026: scalability, hardening and simplification. As a long-term task, it is also pursuing a plan to replace the Ethereum Virtual Machine with a RISC-V architecture. Buterin appears to be effectively shifting away from the layer 2-focused scaling strategy he has advocated for years, instead emphasising strengthening the base layer.