Amid the rise of AI and surveillance technologies, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin advocates for enhanced privacy measures to ensure decentralization remains intact.
The world’s changing at a dizzying pace. Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than most of us can keep up with, reshaping nearly every aspect of life as we know it. Along with this rise in AI, there’s a growing concern: privacy.
When it comes to cryptocurrency, privacy has always been a bit complicated to say the least. It’s something that’s been debated endlessly — sometimes heatedly — and never really resolved.
In a recent blog post, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on why privacy is more important than ever, implying that it’s about preventing the power from getting into the wrong hands.
As Buterin notes, the progress is moving to the point where society may be literally talking about AI reading people’s minds, making implications of this very vast. The society can be facing a future where people’s most personal data — thoughts — are being analyzed and used against them, he adds.
“AI is greatly increasing capabilities for centralized data collection and analysis while greatly expanding the scope of data that we share voluntarily. In the future, newer technologies like brain-computer interfaces bring further challenges: we may be literally talking about AI reading our minds.”
Vitalik Buterin
‘Defining challenges of our time’
And it’s not just about the tech itself. Buterin highlights the risks that come with geopolitics and power dynamics. He pointed out that from payment processors to telecom companies, there’s no shortage of entities holding onto your personal information.
“In general, policing all of these entities at a sufficient level of rigor that ensures that they truly have a high level of care for user data is so effort intensive on both the watcher and the watched that it is likely incompatible with maintaining a competitive free market.”
Vitalik Buterin
To make matters even murkier, governments aren’t always as trustworthy as they might seem. The Ethereum founder points out that a regime that seems stable and respectful of privacy today might not be so tomorrow.
In an interview with ethdaily.net, Ari Redbord, TRM global head of policy, former federal prosecutor and senior U.S. Treasury Official, admitted that the balance between privacy and security in crypto has become “one of the defining challenges of our time.”
“After 9/11, that debate played out in airports and public spaces — today, it’s happening on blockchains. The goal is to protect the rights of lawful users to transact privately while preventing rogue regimes, scammers, and cartels from exploiting pseudonymity to move illicit funds.”
Ari Redbord
‘Not a choice between security and privacy’
Despite the risks, Buterin believes there are solutions already in play. One is zero-knowledge proof of personhood, which proves a person’s unique individuality without revealing any personal details. Another is Privacy Pools, allowing users to prove their funds are clean without exposing private data. When spending, users can show that their coins didn’t come from known hacks or thefts. Privacy Pools, like Railgun, are already in use, Buterin added.
But that’s not all. The Canadian computer programmer also mentions on-device anti-fraud scanning, which scans incoming messages for scams or misinformation without compromising privacy.
When asked whether privacy-focused technology could be misused by cybercriminals, Redbord said the issue isn’t about choosing between privacy or security, but rather about “building with both in mind.”
“With tools like blockchain intelligence, zero-knowledge proofs, digital ID, privacy protocols, and smart contracts, we can thread that needle and build a financial system that is both open and safe. In fact, it is not a choice between security and privacy when it comes to blockchains, the technology uniquely allows us to have both.”
Ari Redbord
Addressing proof of provenance for physical items, Buterin suggests that by using blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs, customers could track a product’s manufacturing history and its environmental impact without revealing its full supply chain, allowing pricing environmental externalities without publicly revealing the supply chain.
Buterin thinks that, big picture, the “most pressing risk of near-future technology is that privacy will approach all-time lows, and in a highly imbalanced way where the most powerful individuals and the most powerful nations get lots of data on everyone, and everyone else will see close to nothing.” That’s why, he says, backing privacy for everyone and making the right tools open source, universal, reliable, and safe “is one of the important challenges of our time.”