Overview
- Vitalik Buterin, who published a technical blog post Monday, proposed combining indistinguishability obfuscation with blockchain state to run private on‑chain applications without trusting human committees.
- Indistinguishability obfuscation, or iO, scrambles a program’s internal rules so users can get outputs without learning the code, which is different from tools that only hide data.
- Buterin says blockchains are needed because an obfuscated program can be copied and cannot by itself track stateful assets like vote totals or money, so the chain supplies a shared, verifiable record.
- He warned current iO implementations are impractical because runtimes are extremely large—what he called “literally galactic”—so this is a long‑term research direction that will need major cryptographic and engineering work.
- The proposal complements existing privacy work such as Interfold and MACI and could, if matured like SNARKs, reduce bribery and coercion in DAOs by removing trusted coordinators.