Written by: imToken

At the beginning of this month, at the EthCC conference in France, Vitalik Buterin raised a somewhat alarming warning: "If Ethereum cannot truly achieve decentralization, it will face a survival crisis in the future."

To this end, he proposed three key testing criteria to measure whether a protocol has sustainable decentralization capabilities: the Walk-Away Test, the Insider Attack Test, and the Trusted Base Test.

Among them, the "Walk-Away Test" is the most fundamental and important aspect, directly addressing a core issue: If the project team disbands or the platform goes offline, can users still safely withdraw their assets and complete interactions?

What is the "Walk-Away Test"

In simple terms, the essence of the Walk-Away Test is whether a project allows users to independently exit, withdraw assets, and interact on-chain even when the development team is completely "offline."

From this perspective, it resembles a safety net clause, not emphasizing the completeness of daily functions, but rather testing whether a protocol is truly "trustless" under the most extreme conditions.

In fact, as early as 2022, Vitalik criticized the majority of Rollup's Training Wheels architecture in a blog post, stating that it relies on centralized operations and human intervention for security. Users who frequently use L2Beat should be very familiar with this, as its homepage displays a related key metric—Stage:

This is an evaluation framework that divides Rollups into three stages of decentralization: "Stage 0," which completely relies on centralized control; "Stage 1," which has limited reliance; and "Stage 2," which is fully decentralized. This also reflects the degree of reliance of Rollups on human intervention.

🔺Image source: L2Beat

One of the core indicators for assessing the Stage is whether users can independently complete fund withdrawals without the cooperation of operators.

This question, while seemingly simple, is actually a critical issue.

For example, for the currently mainstream Rollups, although there are mechanisms like "escape pods," many projects still retain "upgradable contracts" or even "super admin" privileges. While this may seem like an emergency design, it is also a potential risk window.

For instance, the team can control the change address of the logic contract through multi-signature, and even if they emphasize immutability on the surface, as long as a backdoor exists, once malicious logic is injected into the upgrade contract, user assets can be legally transferred.

This means that if user funds are frozen, it becomes difficult to bypass the project team for recovery. The true Walk-Away Test requires the complete elimination of dependencies and intervention paths, ensuring that users can operate independently and maintain control at all times. Even if the core team disappears or the platform suddenly shuts down, users must still have complete control, and their assets will not be locked or held hostage by a third party.

In short, the Walk-Away Test is the litmus test for whether a protocol can truly achieve decentralization. It concerns not only censorship resistance but also whether users still possess asset sovereignty in extreme situations.

The End of Decentralization is "Exit Capability"

Why are BTC and ETH the top choices for new users and institutions?

Because even without Satoshi Nakamoto and Vitalik, Bitcoin and Ethereum can still operate smoothly. Therefore, objectively speaking, for incremental users or institutional players, the core consideration for entering Web3 is "Can I withdraw my money at any time?"

The Walk-Away Test is a direct answer to this question. It represents the "last mile" of achieving decentralization in blockchain and is a practical test of the principle "Not your keys, not your coins."

After all, if users must rely on a specific front-end interface or a particular development team to withdraw assets or interact, it essentially remains a centralized trust relationship. A protocol that truly passes the Walk-Away Test allows users to independently complete operations using on-chain tools and third-party front ends, even if all nodes go offline and all operators run away.

This is not just a technical issue; it is also a commitment to the Web3 philosophy.

For this reason, Vitalik has repeatedly emphasized that many seemingly decentralized DeFi or L2 projects actually harbor centralized pathways such as upgrade keys, backdoor logic, and freezing mechanisms. If these mechanisms are abused, user assets will be completely at the mercy of others.

The Walk-Away Test is precisely the means to check for the existence of these mechanisms and demands their complete removal. Only when the user's exit path does not depend on any party can the protocol be truly trusted.

"Walk-Away Test," a Watershed Moment for Decentralization to Become Reality

Moreover, if we look at it from another angle, we will find that while the Walk-Away Test serves as a core evaluation standard for the security design of Ethereum, especially Rollups, it has already been widely practiced in other areas of Web3:

Take wallets as an example. As a core tool for asset management, they must possess high security and transparency. This includes the randomness of mnemonic and private key generation (true random number generation), firmware security, and open-source factors. Almost all mainstream Web3 wallets allow the export of private keys/mnemonic phrases, enabling users to easily migrate assets to any wallet software or hardware device.

This can be seen as a natural "exit design": users do not need to trust the wallet company itself to maintain control over their funds, allowing users to be not just "experiencers" of Web3 product services but true "owners" of asset sovereignty.

From this perspective, the three core tests proposed by Vitalik actually form a complete closed loop:

• Walk-Away Test: Ensures users can self-redeem after the project ceases operations.
• Insider Attack Test: Whether the system can resist internal malice or collusion attacks from developers.
• Trusted Base Test: Whether the amount of code that users need to trust is sufficiently small and auditable.

These three tests together constitute the decentralized "framework" for the long-term sustainable development of Ethereum, truly achieving "Don't Trust, Verify."

In simple terms, in the Web3 world, the "trust" that does not require trust essentially stems from verifiability. Only through transparent mathematics and algorithms can users feel secure by being able to "Verify" at any time, without worrying about external factors such as the moral integrity of the project team.

🔺Image source: CoinDesk

As Vitalik concluded:

"If we cannot achieve this, Ethereum will ultimately become a memory of a generation, like many things that once shone brightly but ultimately faded into mediocrity, forgotten by history."

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