Vitalik Buterin reconsiders his 2017 stance on blockchains committing to state, emphasizing the importance of state root commitment for practical verification. He highlights zero-knowledge (ZK) technologies like ZK-SNARKs as game-changers that enable both security and scalability without re-executing transactions. Vitalik underscores the need for a fallback 'cabin in the mountains' self-verification model to safeguard against real-world uncertainties such as outages and censorship.