Buterin calls 2026 the year to reclaim self-sovereign computing

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin details his 2026 “self-sovereign” tech stack, swapping Big Tech apps for encrypted, open-source and local privacy tools.

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin declared 2026 to be the “year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty,” starting with his own devices. 

In a Friday post on X, he laid out the software changes he has made to reduce reliance on data-hungry, centralized platforms.

The “two major changes” to the software he used in 2025 were switching “almost fully” to Fileverse, an open-source, decentralized document platform — a kind of privacy-preserving Google Docs — and switching “decisively” to Signal as his primary messaging app.

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