Vitalik's New Proposal: Reusing Ethereum's Approach in the AI Era
- Core Argument: Vitalik Buterin is shifting his focus to the AI field, with the core thesis that the AI era will create a rigid demand for privacy and trustworthy data verification. Ethereum, with its public and immutable characteristics, could become the key infrastructure supporting this demand.
- Key Elements:
- Vitalik, together with the Ethereum Foundation's AI lead, proposed the "ZK API Usage Credits" concept, aiming to use zero-knowledge proof technology to enable users to make anonymous calls to AI large language models, protecting user privacy.
- Vitalik argues that in an era where AI-generated content is infinitely cheap, public, persistent, and immutable data records (like those provided by Ethereum) will become scarce and crucial.
- The Ethereum Foundation has undergone organizational adjustments, forming a privacy team of about 50 people, appointing an AI lead, and listing institutional-grade privacy as a priority on its 2026 roadmap.
- Vitalik has recently engaged in intensive discussions on social media about privacy and efficiency issues in the context of AI, indicating his strategic focus is shifting towards addressing the challenges and opportunities brought by AI.
- Although the proposal faces implementation challenges and skepticism within the industry, its significance lies in identifying a potential major application scenario for privacy—a core crypto issue—in the AI era.
Original Author: Deep Tide TechFlow
The whole world is talking about AI, and the voices about crypto on the timeline have quieted down considerably.
Meanwhile, ETH has been hovering around $2000 for almost two months, and whatever Vitalik says or does doesn't seem to get much attention anymore.
However, I recently scrolled through his X and found that it's not just us being influenced by AI. Over the past month, a significant portion of what he posted has been related to AI, and it's gotten down to the level of technical proposals.
The most noteworthy one is a proposal jointly published by him and Davide Crapis, the Ethereum Foundation's AI lead, on ethresear.ch on February 11th, titled "ZK API Usage Credits."
In one sentence, it's about: using zero-knowledge proofs to let you anonymously call large AI models.
Right now, whether you use ChatGPT or call Claude's API, there's only one payment method:
Register an account, bind an email, bind a credit card.
Every conversation you have, every prompt you send, the platform knows it's from you. What you asked, when you asked it, how many times you asked—it's all tied to your real identity.
Vitalik and Crapis's proposal offers another path.
- The user deposits a sum of money into a smart contract, say 100 USDC.
- The contract registers this deposit onto an encrypted on-chain list. For each subsequent API call, you don't need to present your identity; you only need to generate a zero-knowledge proof.
- This proof can demonstrate two things to the service provider: you are on the list, and your balance is sufficient. However, the proof itself does not reveal which specific entry on the list you are.
The service provider gets paid and can prevent abuse, but never knows who you are.
You can understand this proposal as one thing: Vitalik believes that in the AI era, users should not have to surrender their identity to use an AI tool.
This proposal is currently still in the research phase, far from implementation, and large model providers might not agree to such a method. Meanwhile, the comments section of the proposal is full of rebuttals and skepticism, arguing that AI model companies will always find a way to know your real identity.
But the author believes the significance of this proposal is not entirely about whether it can be implemented itself.
Privacy is something Vitalik has been working on for a decade. From early support for Tornado Cash to promoting zero-knowledge proofs as a core technical roadmap for Ethereum, this thread has never been broken. It's just that in the past few years, privacy has lacked a sufficiently grand narrative to carry it within the context of the crypto industry.
AI has provided that narrative. When you talk to a large model more than you talk to anyone else every day, privacy becomes a real demand.
Vitalik Embraces AI
From February until now, a significant portion of what Vitalik has posted on X has been related to AI, with a density that suggests it's more than just casual chat.
Yesterday he posted a long thread, saying he recently attended a cryptography conference where people cared about privacy, open source, censorship resistance... but had no affection for blockchain.
Among that group, he conducted a thought experiment:
Forget "we are the Ethereum community," start from scratch, and think about where Ethereum is most useful.
His conclusion is that Ethereum's most fundamental value is as a bulletin board. A place where anyone can write, anyone can read, and no one can alter or delete anything.
In the context of AI, this might be the most important thing Vitalik has said in the past couple of years.
We are entering an era of infinitely cheap generation. Text, images, videos, identities—AI can mass-produce them all. When everything can be forged, what becomes scarce?
These questions ultimately point to the same place: a public, persistent, irreversible data layer. And a record that no one can tamper with is precisely what Ethereum can do.
Over the past two years, the skepticism Ethereum has faced can be summed up in one sentence: What exactly do you have left that others can't replace?
Looking at it now, Vitalik hasn't answered that question directly.
However, the Ethereum Foundation has done a few relatively low-key things over the past year: formed a 50-person privacy team, established a privacy research cluster of nearly 50 people, released the Kohaku privacy framework, specifically appointed an AI lead; in the 2026 roadmap, institutional-grade privacy and faster transaction confirmations are listed as top priorities.
Looking back at his intensive output over the past month, it's basically all about discussing Ethereum's privacy and efficiency issues in the context of AI.
I think Vitalik is betting on one thing: the more powerful AI becomes, the more rigid the demand for privacy and verification infrastructure will be. Whether Ethereum can meet this demand is another matter, but he has clearly chosen his table.
ETH is still hovering around $2000. Most people still don't pay much attention to what he's been saying lately.
But perhaps in a few years, looking back, this is the time that should have been paid attention to.
