Vitalik Buterin — Making Ethereum Alignment Legible (2024)
Buterin argues that “Ethereum alignment” — the implicit value set that distinguishes projects that genuinely advance Ethereum’s decentralized, open-source, public-good ethos from those that merely extract value from Ethereum’s network effects — needs to be made explicit and legible. Without a clear articulation, the concept either becomes empty or gets weaponized for social gatekeeping.
He proposes a framework distinguishing alignment in terms of: support for Ethereum’s technical roadmap, support for decentralization (at the base layer and in application design), positive-sum orientation (building genuine value rather than zero-sum extraction), and support for Ethereum’s broader cultural values (openness, permissionlessness, resistance to censorship).
For OM: this essay connects to the question of what distinguishes extitutional technology from extractive technology — and whether Ethereum, in its current development trajectory, remains adequate to the values OM associates with it. The alignment question is the governance question.