Solana CEO Rejects Buterin’s ‘Ossification’ Vision, Vows Perpetual Upgrades

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has declared that blockchain protocols must perpetually “iterate” to survive.

In a January 17 post on the social media platform X, Yakovenko argued that a network’s longevity is strictly tied to its ability to iterate.

Yakovenko Outlines AI-Driven Future for Solana

He posited that for a blockchain to avoid obsolescence, it must never stop changing to fit the shifting requirements of its developers and users.

“To not die requires to always be useful. So the primary goal of protocol changes should be to solve a dev or user problem. That doesn’t mean solve every problem, in fact, saying no to most problems is necessary,” he wrote.

Yakovenko outlined a future where Solana does not rely on any single individual or core engineering group to drive these iterations. Instead, he argued that protocol upgrades should emanate from a diverse, decentralized community of contributors.

Interestingly, the Solana executive said artificial intelligence could play a central role in sustaining the network’s rapid development by shaping its governance and coding in the future.

“LLM can generate a SIMD spec so tight that LLM can verify it’s complete and unambiguous and implement it. The only long pole is agreement and testnet soak testing,” he claimed.

This approach would ostensibly allow the network to self-optimize at a pace impossible for human-only teams.

Meanwhile, Yakovenko’s comments serve as a direct counter-argument to a recent strategic vision laid out by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Buterin recently introduced the concept of the “walkaway test.” This is a milestone in which the Ethereum network becomes self-sustaining and can operate permanently without its founding developers.

Under this vision, Ethereum will “ossify,” reaching a state in which its value proposition is derived from the protocol’s permanence rather than the promise of future features.

Buterin acknowledged that Ethereum must continue to change in the short term. However, he emphasized that the network aims to lock the protocol once it clears specific technical hurdles.

Some of these hurdles include the need for full quantum resistance, sufficient scalability, and a lasting state architecture.

Indeed, this clash of ideologies delineates two distinct paths for the crypto market.

Buterin’s roadmap positions Ethereum as a reliable settlement system that prioritizes security and immutability to attract trust.

Conversely, Yakovenko’s strategy positions Solana as a high-growth technology platform. This means the network prioritizes speed and aggressive adaptation to capture market share in a competitive environment.