Vitalik Buterin: Obfuscation Protocol iO Can Build Near-Trustless Voting Systems and Auction Protocols

Odaily reported that Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "Obfuscation: building the final boss of cryptography (Part I)", systematically outlining the technical tree behind the main line of the iO obfuscation protocol. The article points out that obfuscation technology can transform programs into "encrypted programs," allowing computation on plaintext inputs while hiding internal logic. In theory, this can achieve a "trustless trusted third party," and when combined with blockchain, it can build near-trustless voting systems, auction protocols, and various other applications. The runtime of current iO schemes is technically polynomial time, but the actual computational overhead is enormous, with an estimated runtime exceeding the age of the universe.