On January 1, 2026, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed decentralized applications (DApps) as a solution to vulnerabilities in centralized internet infrastructure, citing Cloudflare’s November 18, 2025, and December 5, 2025, outages, per Cryptopolitan_News and Cointelegraph. In an X post, Buterin argued Ethereum must strive to become the “world computer” for a freer internet, starting with DApps that resist fraud, censorship, and third-party interference. He emphasized DApps for finance, identity, and governance that remain stable even if providers like Cloudflare fail or face attacks.
The November 18, 2025, outage, caused by a bot management config error, downed 20% of global sites, impacting ChatGPT, Spotify, and Truth Social, per. A December 5, 2025, disruption affected Coinbase and Claude AI, per. An October 20, 2025, AWS outage also hit crypto platforms like Coinbase and Ledger, per. Buterin, with Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner, warned in a November 11, 2025, Trustless Manifesto that decentralization erodes through “convenience,” urging reliance on math over intermediaries.
Buterin envisions DApps where users “don’t even notice” if centralized services fail, protecting privacy and transcending companies or politics, per. Ethereum’s Layer 2 solutions and zkEVMs support this, with $167B DeFi TVL, per DefiLlama. X posts from @VitalikButerin reinforce Ethereum’s rebellion against centralization, per. ETH trades at $4,070, down 5%, but DApp growth could drive recovery.
Track Ethereum upgrades on ethereum.org and outage reports on cloudflarestatus.com. ETH support at $4,000 is key; dollar-cost average with stop-losses, or diversify into USDC, per TradingView. Follow @VitalikButerin on X for insights. DApps could mitigate risks from centralized failures, boosting Ethereum to $7,500 by 2026, per Standard Chartered, but adoption and scaling remain challenges.
