On January 6th, Ethereum founder Vitalik rearticulated a core point that is often misunderstood—"Ethereum was not created to make finance faster or applications smoother, but to give people freedom."

This statement comes from the "Declaration of No Trust," which seems simple but often sparks controversy. It’s necessary for us to reconsider the logic behind it.

Words like "efficient" and "convenient" sound appealing, but don’t be fooled. What does efficiency mean? It’s about top Silicon Valley engineers working tirelessly to reduce latency from 473 milliseconds to 368 milliseconds, or to push yields from 4.5% APY to 5.3% APY. And convenience? It’s just making users click fewer buttons, reducing registration time from 1 minute to 20 seconds. These optimizations are indeed satisfying to implement.

But here’s the reality: we can never beat those big Silicon Valley companies. Their engineering capabilities, funding, and talent—far surpass all competitors. Since we are destined to lose this game, why participate at all?

Ethereum’s game is actually another one. The name of this game is "Resilience."

Resilience is not about numbers like 4.5% versus 5.3%. Resilience is the ability to prevent disaster scenarios of -100%. When you are banned for political reasons, developers run away, infrastructure crashes, or cyber warfare erupts, your application remains alive, and users can still access it. That’s the true picture of resilience—regardless of who or where, access and participation are always possible.