The blockchain must continuously evolve to survive, according to Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO of Solana Labs.
I actually think fairly differently on this. Solana needs to never stop iterating. It shouldn’t depend on any single group or individual to do so, but if it ever stops changing to fit the needs of its devs and users, it will die.
— toly 🇺🇸 (@toly) January 17, 2026
It needs to be so materially useful to humans… https://t.co/itqr1b5az4
“Solana should never stop iterating. It shouldn’t depend on any single group or individual, but if the network ever stops changing to meet the needs of its developers and users, it will die,” the expert stated.
This was his response to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who said that the second-largest cryptocurrency's blockchain must reach a point of "failure proof".
“This means that Ethereum should reach a state where we can 'freeze' it if we want. We don’t need to stop making changes to the protocol, but we should reach a situation where the blockchain's value proposition does not strictly depend on any features that are not yet available,” he emphasized.
Ethereum's Philosophy
Blockchain industry leaders have different approaches to development. Buterin prioritizes maximum decentralization, privacy, and maintaining long-term sustainability without constant developer involvement.
On January 18, he urged the Ethereum community to combat “protocol bloat”, which arises from an endless desire to add new features while keeping outdated ones.
An important, and perennially underrated, aspect of "trustlessness", "passing the walkaway test" and "self-sovereignty" is protocol simplicity.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 18, 2026
Even if a protocol is super decentralized with hundreds of thousands of nodes, and it has 49% byzantine fault tolerance, and nodes fully… pic.twitter.com/kvzkg11M3c
According to him, true trustlessness depends not so much on quantitative metrics of decentralization but on the simplicity of the system.
“Even if the protocol is super decentralized with hundreds of thousands of nodes, […] but is a cumbersome mess of hundreds of thousands of lines of code built on five different PhD-level cryptographic systems, it will ultimately fail,” Buterin believes.
He noted that complexity undermines Ethereum in three ways:
- undermining trustlessness: users are forced to blindly trust a narrow circle of experts since they cannot verify its operation themselves;
- failure of the "failure proof" test: if the current client development teams leave, recreating full and secure services from scratch will be nearly impossible due to system complexity;
- erosion of self-sovereignty: even technically savvy users lose the ability to analyze, verify, and understand the system's logic, losing direct control and sovereignty over their assets and actions on the network.
“Garbage Collection”
Buterin believes the root of the problem lies in the methodology for assessing changes. When the main criterion for updates is minimal disruption to existing infrastructure, backward compatibility inevitably takes precedence.
This creates a systemic bias: features are added but almost never removed, leading to constant growth and complexity of the protocol.
To counter this trend, he proposed formalizing the process of "simplification" (or "garbage collection"). The initiative includes:
- gradually reducing the codebase;
- eliminating overly complex cryptographic constructs;
- implementing strict rules that will make client logic stable and predictable.
As a successful example of such "cleaning", Buterin cited the transition from PoW to PoS, which rebooted the network's architecture and current gas model reforms aimed at replacing artificial limits with transparent economic principles.
In the long run, "garbage collection" will allow outdated functions to be moved from the protocol core to the level of smart contracts. This will lighten the client software and simplify its further development.
Solana's Philosophy
Yakovenko adheres to the principle of "adapt or die" and advocates for constant ecosystem updates to meet real needs. He believes upgrades should come from a broad community rather than a narrow group of developers.
“To survive, you must always be useful. Therefore, the main goal of protocol changes should be to solve a specific problem for developers or users. This doesn’t mean solving every problem; in fact, it’s essential to be able to say no to most requests,” the expert emphasized.
Supporters of Solana's philosophy believe that a lack of updates leads to stagnation and defeat in the competitive race.
The head of Solana Labs also suggested that in the future, network fees could fund AI development for writing and improving the blockchain's codebase.
“You should always expect the next version of Solana,” Yakovenko said.
Recall that Vitalik Buterin criticized modern DAOs and called for their reform.