Vitalik Buterin has emphasized the importance of protocol simplicity for decentralization, self-sovereignty, and long-term security. He warned that even highly decentralized systems could force users to rely on a few experts if the code becomes bloated and complex, undermining sustainability. Buterin called for Ethereum to adopt a clear "simplification/garbage collection" mechanism to reduce unnecessary features and dependencies, strengthen invariants, and delegate rarely used complex features to the contract layer. This approach aims to prevent protocol bloat and support long-term stable development.