Published on December 29, 2023 04:54 GMT+00:00edited on December 29, 2023 05:01 GMT+00:00

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the original visions of Web3 have “faded somewhat into the background” with many projects shifting away from the core idea of decentralization.

In a blog post titled “Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again” published today, Buterin wrote that there is a large ideological rift “where significant parts of the non-blockchain decentralization community see the crypto world as a distraction, and not as a kindred spirit and a powerful ally.”

He noted that the term Web3 was originally coined by Ethereum cofounder Gavin Wood. “Rather than seeing it, as I initially did, as ‘Bitcoin plus smart contracts,’ Gavin thought about it more broadly as one of a set of technologies that could together form the base layer of a more open internet stack.”

Buterin said that …