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

Odaily Planet Daily News Vitalik Buterin published "Obfuscation: building the final boss of cryptography (Part I)", systematically sorting out the technical tree behind 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, it can achieve a "trusted third party without trust" and, when combined with blockchain, can build near-trustless voting systems, auction protocols, and other applications. Currently, the runtime of iO solutions is technically polynomial time, but the actual overhead is enormous, with an estimated runtime exceeding the age of the universe.