Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, recently stated that 2026 should be the year we reclaim “computing self-sovereignty”, moving away from Big Tech platforms like Google, and centralized AI systems such as Gemini or ChatGPT.

According to him, we’ve slowly traded decentralization for convenience. In his words, “2026 is the year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty” a shift that goes beyond crypto and extends to everyday digital tools.

Buterin also acknowledged Ethereum’s past trade-offs. In the push for mass adoption, the ecosystem leaned toward convenience-first solutions (for example, “trust-me” wallets), partially sidelining its original decentralization ethos. His current focus is to reverse that trend and make self-sovereign tools the default.

Key building blocks already in motion include:

• PeerDAS (now live)
• zkEVMs (currently in alpha)
• ERC-8004, enabling agentic AI interactions on Ethereum

Together, these upgrades allow for private, verifiable AI transactions, micropayments, and decentralized compute positioning Ethereum as a backbone for AI agents that could challenge centralized players like Google Gemini, OpenAI, or Anthropic.

Digging deeper into the topic, I even came across projects like Sentient, recently listed on Bitget.
The project raised $85M in seed funding, backed by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, and recently launched SERA, a next-generation crypto AI agent reportedly outperforming ChatGPT in tool-calling and real-time data access.

If Vitalik were to push a fully Ethereum-native decentralized AI initiative, likely more advanced than most current AI projects in the ecosystem, it could significantly accelerate adoption combining Ethereum’s scalability roadmap with genuine decentralization.

Personally, I see this as bullish long-term.

Centralized AI systems remain vulnerable to censorship, bias, and single points of control. Decentralized alternatives like Sentient could democratize AGI though scalability and user experience remain the main challenges.

What do you think?
Could we realistically see a blockchain-based, decentralized AI rival Big Tech in the coming years?

DYOR curious to hear your takes.