Vitalik Buterin predicts 60% chance cheap cryptography could cut costs of advanced encryption to under 10× normal computation
Buterin's forecast
On Sept. 6, Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin said there is a 60 % chance that three advanced cryptographic techniques—SNARKs, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and indistinguishability obfuscation (iO)—will eventually run at less than ten times the cost of ordinary computation. He also gave a 33 % chance that all three could reach near‑zero extra cost at scale.
Key points
- SNARKs are the closest to being practical; FHE and iO are still very expensive or unproven.
- Cheaper cryptography could let private applications run without relying on custodians, auditors, exchanges or clearinghouses.
- Buterin expects at least one of the three, likely SNARKs, to achieve single‑digit overhead by the end of the decade.
Ethereum privacy roadmap
Ethereum’s plan separates privacy into three parts: private reads, private writes, and private proving. This design lets the network improve privacy in one area while waiting for cheaper cryptography in others. Techniques such as anonymous RPC, private information retrieval, oblivious RAM and light clients already reduce how much data users expose.
Technical hurdles
FHE can compute on encrypted data, but a 2026 benchmark showed a small BERT workload needed multi‑gigabyte artifacts and more than six hours of processing—far slower than normal computation. iO, which would hide a program’s internal logic, remains far from practical.
Confirmed facts
- Buterin’s tweet on Sept. 6 gave the 60 % and 33 % probability estimates.
- SNARKs already enable zero‑knowledge proofs that let users verify statements without revealing data.
- Ethereum’s privacy roadmap includes private reads, writes and proving.
Open questions
- Whether any of the three techniques will reach the cost targets by the end of the decade is still uncertain.
- Implementation of proposals such as frame transactions, inclusion lists and keyed nonces is not yet finalized.
