That's fair, but I wonder if it isn't precisely the figureheads spearheading these technologies that should communicate most clearly and concisely, especially to reach those 'less in the know'.

Agreed. For all it's problems, ensuring that researchers are also teachers is something that academia got right.

He does that all the time, but that's not what the audience of this particular article wants or needs. Technical discussions are ok and are important and assuming a level of competence for those discussions as table stakes to participate is necessary sometimes.

On an open web however, audiences are pluralistic, and even within technical circles there's a fine line between elucidation and obfuscation.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm okay with jargon, but it can be difficult to get the dosage right.

He does do that from time to time. Most of his stuff is pretty deep in the weeds and decision trees of specific Ethereum implementations (e.g. this article), but occasionally he'll have one that's more legible to a wider audience. I think his essay on blockchain voting is a great example. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html