Vitalik Warns Crypto: Don't Repeat OpenAI's Mistakes

Speaking at EthCC on July 3, 2025, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin issued a pointed warning to the crypto industry: do not follow the path OpenAI took — first abandoning openness in the name of safety, then sacrificing safety itself in pursuit of rapid growth.

Buterin argued that the pattern is not unique to AI. Web1, Web2, and crypto projects alike have repeatedly drifted toward corporatization once they form legal entities, because financial incentives and social networks begin to drive decisions that were once governed by principle. The structure of the organisation, he suggested, ends up reshaping the mission.

His prescription is structural: the ecosystem needs more diverse funding and reward models — ones that keep open source, privacy, and censorship resistance as hard constraints alongside commercial success, not trade-offs to be negotiated away when growth accelerates.