vitalik

Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "Obfuscation: building the final boss of cryptography (Part I)", systematically outlining the entire technical tree behind the mainline of the obfuscation protocol (iO). The article points out that obfuscation technology can transform programs into "encrypted programs", allowing computations on plaintext inputs while hiding internal logic. Theoretically, it can achieve "trustless trusted third parties", and when combined with blockchain, it can build nearly trustless voting systems, auction protocols, and various other applications. However, the current iO scheme, while technically polynomial time, incurs enormous practical overhead, with expected runtimes exceeding the lifespan of the universe.The article details the construction process of lattice-based iO, covering the stacking of primitives such as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), attribute-based encryption (ABE), obfuscated circuits, function encryption, and XiO. Vitalik stated that the field has moved from "impossible" to "provably secure" over the past decade, but there remains a significant gap to practical application. He proposed three future paths: further optimizing the existing lattice-based route, adopting bolder cryptographic assumptions to simplify constructions, or exploring entirely new assumptions that are completely different from lattices, emphasizing that if any direction succeeds, it will largely "solve cryptography", enabling any protocol describable by an ideal trusted third party to be securely implemented.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a wallet associated with Vitalik "0xD04" transferred 7,000 ETH (worth $11.06 million) to a new wallet. Based on the historical transaction records of this address, this ETH is likely to be deposited into a CEX.Previously, it transferred 1,300 ETH (worth $31.6 million), which was then deposited into Paxo. The wallet currently holds 20,001 ETH (worth $31.6 million).

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has announced a budget cut of approximately 40% this year as part of its financial transformation plan.According to the funding management policy released last year, EF is gradually transitioning from an "expenditure-based organization" to an "endowment-based model," aiming to reduce the annual expenditure ratio from about 15% to approximately 5% after 2030. In this process, the foundation emphasizes that it will accept inevitable personnel and resource adjustments and acknowledges the loss of some capabilities and experience.In this round of restructuring, EF has reduced approximately 54 employees, accounting for about 20% of the overall team. Vitalik stated that many of these departing members may continue to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem in external forms in the future. Meanwhile, the foundation will shift its strategic focus to a more "lightweight" protocol governance and development path, including advancing the "Strawmap" long-term roadmap, covering core protocol upgrades such as consensus mechanisms, privacy technologies, account models, and state structures, and promoting Ethereum's evolution into its third phase.In terms of specific structural adjustments, EF will weaken the "multi-client redundancy priority" model and shift towards a development approach based more on specialized division of labor and AI-assisted formal verification; the privacy and scalability research team PSE will be restructured, transitioning from exploratory R&D to more focused engineering implementation; the scale of ecosystem activities such as Devcon will also gradually be reduced.In addition, EF will reduce investments in large cross-domain projects in the future, placing greater emphasis on protocol security and high-value improvements, while encouraging more innovative work to be completed externally. Although the path is more streamlined, Ethereum will continue to strengthen its core positioning as a highly censorship-resistant and long-term stable protocol.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that there have been recent voices suggesting that AI text analysis will make online anonymity difficult to maintain.To this end, he revealed that at some point in this decade, he had anonymously authored a public document of moderate importance to Ethereum, estimating that there are about 200 to 2000 documents in the Ethereum ecosystem that are of no less importance than that document.Vitalik invited the community and AI tools to "find" this anonymous work among these documents, in order to test whether AI can de-anonymize authors in large-scale texts through methods such as stylistic analysis.

Hsiao-Wei Wang, the first Chinese Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, announced her resignation today. In the announcement, she stated, "I have decided to prioritize my personal life and future direction. Now is the right time to step back and I am still contemplating what my next steps should be." In response, Vitalik Buterin praised Hsiao-Wei Wang's contributions, stating that she has been a "steadfast contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem for the past decade" and expressed his "anticipation for her next adventures."On March 10, 2025, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced that Hsiao-Wei Wang (Chinese name: Wang Xiaowei) was promoted to board member, becoming the first Chinese leader to rise from the technical grassroots to the board in the seven years since EF's establishment.

Vitalik Buterin once again proposed the concept of "synthetic stable assets," stating that the object of stability anchoring does not necessarily have to be the US dollar. He indicated that the core demand of users for stablecoins is price stability for future expenditures, but if the crypto ecosystem is built on US dollar-backed stablecoins, it is difficult to claim true decentralization.

Vitalik posted on platform X, stating that building index-tracking assets based on options rather than debt is worth considering and trying, using options as the foundation of DeFi instead of CDPs and liquidation mechanisms. This design can avoid the extreme price fluctuations that cause severe and global liquidation effects, allowing exposure to the index to deviate from preferred exposure in a smoother secondary manner.Its key advantage is that it does not require instant oracles and can operate based on slow oracles, which are the types of oracles used in prediction markets. The design has a clear drawback, which is the need for regular rebalancing, and it remains to be clarified whether and how rebalancing can have sufficient slippage resistance.Vitalik added that compared to relying on oracles that must provide real-time answers and may be induced to give incorrect real-time answers without human remediation time, he believes that holding algorithmic stablecoins placed within such mechanisms is safer.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recommended the Interfold project, stating, "More people should learn about Interfold, which is a general implementation of the MACI (Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) concept that I have been advocating for nearly a decade. This project is essentially a privacy protocol optimized for scenarios such as voting and secret auctions, allowing more people to pay attention to and understand this technological advancement."Vitalik also mentioned that the core mechanisms of Interfold include generating threshold encryption keys, users submitting votes on-chain with ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof) credentials, and threshold decryption after arbitrary computation in Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which can achieve unconditional voter anonymity, Ethereum-level censorship resistance, and ZK over FHE ensuring result correctness, among other strong security guarantees. The current main limitation is the high cost of complex computations (such as multiplication), with only addition-based voting being mature, and optimizations like slashing-based approaches are being advanced, with a long-term goal of implementing obfuscation techniques to eliminate M-of-N committee dependency.

Vitalik Buterin updated on several CROPS AI related developments and pointed out that there is a clear intersection between the "CROPS Ethereum access layer" and "CROPS AI." He stated that if remote large language models could be called for payment through zero-knowledge proofs, it could also be used to solve the Ethereum private RPC reading issue.Meanwhile, Deepseek v4 has been released, and the 2-bit quantization version can run within 90 GB, but currently runs faster on Apple hardware; the messaging app messa has supported Telegram Alpha features; the model running tool luceb has shown higher efficiency when running intensive models; the local AI recording tool VoxTerm is still under continuous development. Vitalik Buterin also mentioned that large language models fine-tuned for specific applications will help improve secure code writing capabilities, and corresponding fine-tuned models should be available for Ethereum-related scenarios.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that he will no longer write regular blog posts and has decided to try writing some science fiction stories on the theme of decentralized governance.According to the link he posted, he has completed the first and second chapters of the science fiction novel.

Vitalik revealed in a post on X this morning that nearly 90% of his net worth is in ETH, with the remaining majority being about 40 million dollars in on-chain fiat, each dollar of which has already been allocated to certain open-source biotechnology, software, or hardware projects.

According to The Block, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy article on the X platform, responding to the recent turmoil within the Ethereum Foundation and the wave of researcher departures. Buterin stated that the foundation is choosing "long-term survival over being large and comprehensive," reducing ETH sales, and focusing on Ethereum's anti-censorship, open-source, privacy, and security attributes known as CROPS. He emphasized that the post represents his personal views, and his power within the organization will continue to diminish, which aligns with his wishes.Buterin believes that the EF should be understood as "a node with a clear purpose, alongside other nodes," rather than the center of Ethereum. He pointed out that the foundation holds about 0.16% of ETH, while other blockchain foundations typically hold 10% to 50% of their own token supply. The foundation will focus on key activities that only it can drive, with some respected contributors and projects remaining outside the foundation, which will help attract external capital.In terms of technical direction, Buterin proposed three priorities: achieving "provably secure Ethereum" through AI-assisted formal verification, usable chain consensus, and minimizing intermediaries. He explicitly opposed Ethereum competing solely on speed, calling that "a path to mediocrity." Finally, Buterin stated that the EF will be smaller than in previous years, its stance will be more distinct, and in some cases, its position may be difficult to understand, but it will also be more enduring. The foundation's new long-term operational model should stabilize in the coming months.

Vitalik Buterin posted on social media, listing several native privacy initiatives that Ethereum is currently promoting, including the combination of AA and FOCIL (providing top-notch support and strong packaging guarantees for privacy protocol transactions), the Keyed Nonces scheme, and access layer-related work (covering features such as Kohaku and private reads).

Lighter may benefit from the recent "fireside chat" between founder Vlad Novakovski and Vitalik discussing high-performance applications on Ethereum and the ZK Rollup scaling roadmap, as well as smart money seeking undervalued targets in the same sector amid multiple favorable conditions. Its platform token Lit has strengthened against the overall weakness in the crypto market. According to HTX data, it is currently priced at $1.771, with a 24-hour increase of 21.87%. The current market focus is on Lighter's high-performance application scenarios in the Ethereum ecosystem, its scalability roadmap, and the future development direction of decentralized finance (DeFi).In addition, according to DefiLlama data, Lighter's 24-hour trading volume reached $1.289 billion, with a holding volume exceeding $760 million.