Crypto: Buterin Calls 2026 The Year To Reclaim Self-sovereign Computing

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin declared 2026 to be the “year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty,” starting with his own devices.

In a Friday post on X, he laid out the software changes he has made to reduce reliance on data-hungry, centralized platforms.

Signal uses end-to-end encryption by default for all one-to-one and group chats, and stores minimal metadata, meaning only limited information, such as when an account was created or the last date it connected to the service.

Telegram, in contrast, only offers end-to-end encryption in optional “secret chats” and otherwise keeps messages and metadata on its own servers, a model that has drawn scrutiny as law enforcement data requests have increased in countries like France.

In 2026, Buterin has moved from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap via OrganicMaps and from Gmail to Proton Mail, while prioritizing decentralized social media.

Buterin also discussed his experiments with locally hosting large language models, arguing that sending all data to third-party services is “unnecessary” when users can increasingly run artificial intelligence tools on their own hardware.

He said better user interfaces, integrations and efficiency are still needed to make local models a seamless default, but added that there has already been “huge progress” compared with a year ago.

Buterin’s post also comes amid renewed debate over how much access governments and platforms should have to users’ private communications and metadata.

The European Union’s controversial Chat Control proposal, for example, originally included pre‑encryption scanning of messages to detect abusive material, and prompted warnings from civil liberties groups and technologists that client‑side scanning could undermine trust in encrypted apps.

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Source: CoinTelegraph