[Vitalik: Revisiting the 'Mountain Cabin' Concept, ZK Technology Changes Blockchain Trade-offs] Odaily Planet Daily News – Vitalik Buterin recently published an article stating that he no longer fully agrees with the 2017 perspective on blockchains that 'only record transaction order without committing to state' and explained the reasons for his change in viewpoint. Vitalik pointed out that his earlier opposition to this concept was primarily due to the fact that if the chain does not commit to state, ordinary users would either have to fully verify all transactions from the genesis block or be forced to trust a single third-party service provider—neither of which are ideal options. In contrast, designs like Ethereum's, which commit to the state root in the block header, allow for the verification of any state through Merkle proofs under the 'majority honest' consensus assumption, making it more feasible. He emphasized that what truly changes the trade-offs is the development of zero-knowledge technologies like ZK-SNARKs, which make it possible to verify the correctness of the chain without re-executing all transactions, thereby achieving both security and scalability simultaneously. Additionally, Vitalik reflected on the uncertainties in the real world: network outages, service provider shutdowns, consensus centralization, and censorship risks, which can occur at any time. Therefore, blockchain systems must always retain a fallback option that is 'self-verifiable and independent of others.' In his view, the 'mountain cabin' is not a model for everyday living for everyone but rather a safety fallback in extreme situations and an important bargaining chip to constrain intermediaries and service providers. Maintaining such a minimally viable, self-sufficient path is an indispensable part of Ethereum's long-term evolution.