Vitalik Declares 2026 ‘Year of No Compromise’; Unveils Kohaku Wallet to Kill Centralized RPCs

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin issued a directive to the network’s developers on Friday: the era of convenience-first centralization is over. In a detailed roadmap released Jan. 16, Buterin outlined a technical pivot designed to eliminate reliance on centralized Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) like Infura and Alchemy. ETH traded laterally at $3,335 following the publication, as the market digested the long-term infrastructure play.

The ‘Trust Me’ Wallet Problem

For a decade, Ethereum users have unknowingly outsourced verification. When a user checks a balance or signs a transaction on MetaMask, they do not verify the blockchain; they ask a centralized server (an RPC) what the blockchain says. Buterin argues this breaks the core promise of crypto.

The solution is Kohaku, a new reference wallet backed by the Ethereum Foundation. Forked from Ambire, Kohaku integrates Helios, a light client developed by a16z crypto. Unlike standard wallets, Helios downloads cryptographic proofs and verifies them locally.

2026 is the year that we take back lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and trustlessness. We will not get everything we want in the next Kohaku release… but it will make Ethereum into an ecosystem that deserves its place.

Privacy by Default, Not Configuration

The roadmap extends beyond verification. Buterin highlighted the integration of ZK-EVMs (Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines) to allow standard consumer hardware to run full nodes, drastically lowering the barrier to entry. Currently, running a node requires significant storage and bandwidth, forcing most users to rely on third parties.

To combat metadata leakage, where RPC providers can see user IP addresses and transaction habits, the protocol will implement ORAM (Oblivious RAM) and PIR (Private Information Retrieval). These cryptographic primitives blind the server to the specific data a user is requesting.

The Institutional Shift

This pivot forces a re-evaluation of the wallet stack. If Kohaku succeeds in standardizing local verification, centralized infrastructure providers may lose their data dominance. The roadmap also prioritizes social recovery and time locks, moving security away from the single-point-of-failure seed phrase model that has plagued retail adoption.