MIT Technology Review published an article called “Vitalik Buterin says his creation can’t succeed unless he takes a step back.” As you can imagine the cryptospace was in shock to read such a headline.

Inside the article, there’s an interview that MIT conducted with Buterin during the Ethereum Devcon4 conference that was held in Prague last week.

As you can see for yourself, the title of the article implies the fact that Buterin plans on leaving Ethereum, but it seems that this is not the case.

Buterin, accused of getting ready to pull a Dan Larimer

During a Twitter conversation, Bitcoin price analyst Tone Vays accuses Buterin of “getting ready to pull a Dan Larimer.”

Just in case you don’t know what he is referring to, Dan Larimer is the creator of Steemit, BitShares, and EOS and he has been harshly criticized for leaving projects behind and moving onto other ventures. Anyway, here’s what Buterin answered:

1. I am not leaving. No plans to stop or reduce blog posts / ethresearch posts / github commits.
2. Vitalik is "in charge": ETH is centralized! Vitalik is not "in charge": Vitalik is pulling a Dan Larimer! This is why BTC maximalists have zero credibility.

— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) November 2, 2018

Vays also asked Buterin whether the headline and subheadlines in the article mentioned above are inaccurate and here’s what he answered:

Umm…. this is MSM we're talking about. So, yes.

— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) November 2, 2018

As a conclusion, Buterin is not stepping away from his project.

The Ethereum project is surrounded by controversy

Ethereum as a project is decentralized, and it’s composed of thousands of nodes, users, developers, and some voices in the cryoptsphere have even described Buterin as a benevolent dictator who is leading the way.

It’s true that Buterin created Ethereum, and he’s involved a lot in ETH’s research team, but many argue that his overall role has been shrinking in the project.

For instance, Hudson Jameson, member of the Ethereum Foundation, has been quoted as saying that Buterin is “out of the decision-making in a lot of ways,” and that “that’s something that I think is really really important for the ecosystem to thrive and become more decentralized.”

Closing words

Buterin agreed somehow that his influence over Ethereum has been dropping a bit over time and in his MIT Technology Review he said that it’s “a necessary part of the growth of the community.”

He also made sure to highlight that his involvement in the project has amounted to “a significantly smaller share of the work than I had two or three years ago,” and said that downsizing his influence is “something we are definitely making a lot of progress on.”