**Vitalik Buterin has pledged that 2026 will be the year the Ethereum community begins to reverse the 'backsliding' of personal autonomy in crypto.**

In a recent X post, Buterin declared, **'2026 is the year that we take back lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and trustlessness.'** This announcement signals a major shift for Ethereum, focusing on reclaiming core values that have eroded over time.

### Key Improvements on the Horizon

Buterin outlined several critical areas for enhancement:
- **Boosting onchain privacy** through initiatives like the **Kohaku effort** at the Ethereum Foundation.
- Making it easier to **run a full node**, **use dapps**, and **take control over personal data**.
- Implementing **social recovery wallets and timelocks** to prevent loss of funds from misplaced seed phrases, a feature that started gaining traction with **EIP-7702** during Ethereum's Pectra upgrade.
- Improving **privacy UX** to enable private payments with the same ease as public ones.

### Ongoing Efforts and Future Upgrades

Ethereum developers have been laying the groundwork for these improvements, targeting upcoming upgrades like **Glamsterdam**. The Ethereum Foundation has refocused its **Privacy Cluster** and is working on the **Kohaku wallet framework**. Other proposals, such as **ERC-4337 for account abstraction** and **FOCIL**, aim to enhance censorship resistance.

Buterin emphasized the importance of using **dapps from onchain UIs with IPFS** to avoid reliance on trusted servers, which could compromise asset recovery or security. He also highlighted tools like the **Helios client**, which allows trustless interaction with Ethereum without running a full node, and cryptographic techniques like **Oblivious RAM (ORAM)** and **Private Information Retrieval (PIR)** to prevent privacy leaks.

### Addressing Past Compromises

Buterin acknowledged that Ethereum has seen **serious backsliding** in recent years, with nodes becoming harder to run, dapps leaking data, and increased centralization in block building. He stated, **'In 2026, no longer. Every compromise of values that Ethereum has made up to this point... we are making that compromise no longer.'**

This vision aims to restore Ethereum's foundational principles, ensuring it remains a robust and user-centric ecosystem.

Buterin said major improvements are underway to make it easier to run a full node, use dapps, and take control over personal data.

Today Bitcoin Articles Digested