- Vitalik Buterin envisions Ethereum’s growth through stable and low-risk DeFi protocols, not through high-risk speculation or hype cycles.
- Ethereum’s DeFi protocols have reduced risks significantly, with losses dropping from over 5% in 2019 to nearly zero by 2025.
- Buterin sees opportunities in innovative DeFi applications like reputation-based lending and stable value tokens that offer enhanced security and reliability.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a vision for Ethereum’s future, emphasizing low-risk decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. According to Buterin, Ethereum’s success no longer relies on the volatile hype surrounding NFTs or meme coins, but instead, on simpler, stable financial systems. Buterin termed this transformation as the search engine of Google to the foundation of other services, and Ethereum, in his opinion, will emerge as the creator of reliable and low-risk DeFi protocols that remain resilient to market volatility and keep expanding sustainably.
Buterin emphasizes that Ethereum will need to concentrate on a solid base of financial services, such as payment systems, savings accounts, collateralized lending, and synthetic assets. Not only do these systems, he believes, give the users secure and reliable tools, but they also make Ethereum long-term viable by locking up ETH and creating regular transaction fees. This is because the Ethereum DeFi protocols have become risk-averse, and the losses have dropped to close to zero in 2025, as compared to more than 5% of the total value locked in 2019.
A More Secure and Trustworthy Ethereum Platform.
Notably, according to Buterin, the risks in traditional finance have increased compared to the risks in DeFi. As Ethereum protocols of DeFi continue to improve and become more secure, users are seeking safer ways of operating in their assets. These protocols are proving to be major building blocks of the Ethereum infrastructure, as they are becoming mature and people can trust them as a reliable platform to be used by millions of users.
In the future, Buterin predicts the appearance of new opportunities in the field of low-risk DeFi. These involve more radical innovations like reputation-based lending systems, which need little collateral, risk-hedging prediction markets, and the use of token money like flatcoins, pegged to price indexes. These applications will be based on the platform of security and stability that Ethereum has provided, which will lead to more viable expansion in the DeFi arena.
The vision of Ethereum expressed by Buterin is based on the transition to low-risk DeFi apps, which will guarantee the presence of Ethereum as a stable and ubiquitous platform in the financial system. Having secure financial services as its fundamental component, Ethereum is likely to provide stability and trust to users across the globe.
