Bitizen founder: Vitalik is an exceptional genius programmer, but he might also be a terrible product manager
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Bitizen founder: Vitalik is an exceptional genius programmer, but he might also be a terrible product manager
Why does Vitalik and the Ethereum community appear to have such strong hostility toward MPC technology?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Winson
Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik once again expressed negative views on wallet solutions based on MPC technology in a tweet, as shown below:
Original Twitter post:
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1674032447531495426
This is not the first time Vitalik has criticized MPC wallets. As early as May 2022, he had already voiced similar opinions, even using an angry emoji at the time:
Original Twitter post:
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1527359917161517071
As everyone knows, Vitalik has long been a technological trendsetter in the Web3 space. His blog and Twitter posts have featured numerous high-quality technical articles that have actually led many technological developments. Some even say: one blog post from Vitalik can spawn multiple startups. These remarks sufficiently reflect Vitalik’s excellence and outstanding achievements. However, his views on MPC technology seriously deviate from reality, carrying obvious double standards and bias—so much so that they’ve evoked strong emotions like “anger”—which is truly hard to accept.
By the time of writing, several friends have sent me Vitalik’s tweet asking for my opinion. My immediate reaction was: when a KOL's influence is used negatively, the resulting damage can be astonishing. Vitalik has consistently shown deep hostility and prejudice toward MPC technology, viewing it as a wrong direction. He tirelessly promotes smart contract wallets (SCA, also known as AA, Account Abstraction) as replacements for EOA, frequently highlighting the flaws of EOA and the advantages of SCA(AA), while deliberately ignoring EOA’s strengths and SCA(AA)'s shortcomings. These biased views, amplified by Vitalik’s influence, have created a powerful narrative—so dominant that it has become today’s political correctness.
To clarify: MPC is fundamentally a key management technology. Its core significance in Web3 wallets lies in “removing the ‘physical entity’ of private keys using privacy computation,” thereby solving the single point of failure issue of private keys without compromising their original signing functionality. It delivers perfect security along with many other flexible and beneficial features. When properly applied, MPC can be considered the ideal replacement for private keys—and there is no better alternative.
In the Web3 ecosystem, there are two existing types of wallets: EOA controlled by private keys, and SCA(AA) controlled by Signing Key(s). EOA is the most commonly used and familiar wallet type, whereas SCA(AA) is less common and its Signing Keys are poorly understood. In fact, many unprofessional articles incorrectly claim that “SCA(AA) wallets have no private keys.” This is false. While SCA(AA) offers richer and more diverse control mechanisms, every such mechanism still ultimately requires something equivalent to a private key—referred to in SCA(AA) as a Signing Key. You can think of this as the private key of an SCA(AA) wallet.
As previously stated, MPC technology “uses privacy computation to eliminate the physical existence of private keys and brings additional benefits.” Clearly, MPC can be combined with EOA to replace EOA’s private key, or integrated with SCA(AA) to replace its Signing Key. Such integrations significantly enhance both types of wallets in terms of security and usability. Therefore, MPC and SCA(AA) are not competitors—they are perfectly combinable. The real competition exists between EOA and SCA(AA). What Vitalik and the Ethereum community have long aimed for is replacing and eliminating EOA with SCA(AA)—a goal entirely unrelated to MPC technology. So why does Vitalik and the Ethereum community appear to harbor such deep animosity toward MPC?
Possible reasons include:
1. Criticizing what they don’t understand
Most current market examples of MPC wallets involve combining MPC with EOA; there are few cases of MPC+SCA(AA). This leads people unfamiliar with MPC technology to mistakenly equate “MPC wallets” with “EOA wallets” due to skewed observations. Then comes the tragic irony: because they dislike EOA and wish to phase it out, they extend their hatred to MPC by association. This is essentially criticizing something they don't understand—a surprisingly common phenomenon, even among many developers in the Ethereum community.
2. Perceiving MPC as diluting Ethereum’s technical roadmap consensus
Combining MPC with EOA not only solves many inherent flaws of traditional private-key-based EOA wallets (such as eliminating single points of failure, loss, and leakage of private keys and seed phrases, and addressing the difficulty of using seed phrases), but also enables EOA wallets to gain many features often promoted as exclusive advantages of SCA(AA)—for example, MPC+EOA can achieve multi-signature functionality, key rotation (“re-sharing,” mentioned by Vitalik in his tweet), MFA (multi-factor authentication), fine-grained control over spending limits and wallet permissions, and even (off-chain) social recovery. These capabilities, typically believed to exist only in SCA(AA) solutions, are not only achievable through MPC+EOA combinations, but sometimes performed even better—offering superior user experience and avoiding gas fees. These benefits brought by integrating MPC with EOA dramatically weaken the perceived disadvantages of EOA and advantages of SCA(AA) that Vitalik and the Ethereum community have heavily promoted. Previously, EOA was seen as clearly inferior to SCA(AA), allowing the community to uniformly support SCA(AA). But now, with MPC enhancing EOA, the landscape has fundamentally shifted. This undermines the community’s willingness and consensus around replacing EOA with SCA(AA), diverting market resources and attention. As a result, die-hard advocates pushing for SCA(AA) begin resenting or mocking MPC technology. Vitalik’s negative stance further intensifies this division.
3. Bias driven by vested interests
Vitalik and the Ethereum community aim to maximize Ethereum adoption. Hence, they expect all solutions to operate on-chain, believing only on-chain systems are decentralized and secure, while dismissing off-chain alternatives as centralized and insecure. From this perspective, both EOA and MPC-enhanced EOA must “die,” because they are off-chain and thus deemed unsafe and insufficiently decentralized. All users should supposedly migrate to on-chain SCA(AA) wallets. This is pure prejudice.
Many within the Ethereum community led by Vitalik are Ethereum maximalists who have turned a neutral technical comparison into an ideological battle of “you or me,” resorting to criticism for the sake of opposition. To this extent, Vitalik has begun making unreasonable and baseless claims.
Statements like “MPC-based EOA wallets have fundamental flaws because they cannot revoke private keys,” “former holders can still recover the private key,” and “smart contract wallets are the only choice” are nothing short of deliberate and malicious agenda-setting.
These arguments start with a major assumption: private keys must be revocable to solve issues of loss or leakage. Based on this premise, they attack any solution lacking revocation capability. This appears logical but is conceptually flawed. MPC addresses the private key problem at a higher level—by eliminating private keys altogether. An MPC wallet can function throughout its lifecycle without ever generating a private key, thus completely avoiding the risks of private key loss or exposure. Only systems relying on private keys face such problems and require revocation mechanisms. Since MPC wallets do not suffer from private key issues, why would they need private key revocation? As for the claim that “former holders can still recover the private key,” this borders on malicious misinformation. MPC wallets can effectively defend against collusion attacks through various means, and such collusion risks also exist in SCA(AA) wallets—for instance, Guardians could collude to attack user assets. By criticizing MPC for lacking a feature it doesn’t need and pointing to a risk equally present (and solvable) in SCA(AA), Vitalik creates a misleading impression that MPC is inherently flawed and insecure. This reveals just how deep the bias and ill intent run.
Technology is neutral—no single technology can solve all problems perfectly. Developers should not be bound by bias or ideology, nor blindly follow tech celebrities without independent research and critical thinking. Even stars have blind spots and biases shaped by their positions. Developers should focus on user needs and scenarios, applying the most suitable technologies to deliver effective product solutions. They should deepen their technical understanding, broaden their knowledge base, flexibly combine technologies, and apply them where they fit best. Any technology that benefits users deserves to be used. Yet in reality, many developers lack expertise, fail to study technologies deeply, misuse them, and then blame the technology itself. Lacking independent judgment, they mindlessly idolize tech figures, blindly champion one technology while rejecting another—an ignorant and laughable behavior. This phenomenon is all too common in today’s Ethereum community, even appearing in statements by well-known smart contract wallet developers—a truly regrettable state of affairs.
At Bitizen, our product design thoroughly investigates and integrates various technologies, aiming to create the best possible user experience. In Bitizen, we push the advantages of MPC technology to near perfection, seamlessly integrating it with both EOA and SCA(AA) to support both MPC+EOA and MPC+SCA(AA). This maximizes the strengths of both wallet types while minimizing their weaknesses.
With Bitizen’s MPC+EOA solution, users no longer need to worry about the security risks of EOA private keys or seed phrases. They can effortlessly enjoy security surpassing hardware and multisig wallets—all for free—while retaining EOA’s advantages: zero-cost creation, low gas usage, and full ecosystem compatibility. With Bitizen’s MPC+SCA(AA) solution, users inherit the top-tier security from MPC+EOA while gaining SCA(AA) benefits like batch transactions and flexible gas payment options. Of course, each approach has trade-offs: MPC+EOA lacks batch transactions and flexible gas payments, while MPC+SCA(AA) incurs higher gas costs and faces serious ecosystem compatibility issues—many dApps simply don’t work with SCA(AA) wallets. Users can freely choose the option that best fits their needs, free from ideological bias.
Incidentally, we find Vitalik’s on-chain social recovery mechanism designed for SCA(AA) to be expensive and difficult to use—simply terrible. It’s a backup/recovery method worse in user-friendliness than seed phrases, yet it’s hailed by Vitalik and many SCA(AA) wallet developers as the best solution. We still struggle to believe so many SCA(AA) wallet developers proudly display both “Onboarding the next billion users to Web3” and “Social Recovery” on their homepage, seemingly oblivious to the irreconcilable contradiction between these two goals. In Bitizen’s MPC+SCA(AA) solution, we completely abandon on-chain social recovery and instead implement a gas-free off-chain recovery mechanism, supporting both self-recovery and off-chain social recovery—with far superior security, usability, and censorship resistance compared to any other solution.
In summary, in our technical implementation process, Bitizen never emotionally praises or denigrates any technology. We do not blindly endorse Vitalik’s technical proposals or product designs due to his accomplishments, nor do we let his criticism of MPC affect our recognition of his genuine contributions. Bitizen does not represent MPC technology nor is it an uncritical supporter of MPC. We believe only a neutral, independent, and in-depth research attitude toward technology and public figures, combined with an honest, user-centered approach, can generate real value for the industry and the community.
Finally, here’s my personal take on Vitalik: Vitalik is a brilliant and accomplished programmer—but a very poor product manager.
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Winson@BitizenWallet
