Vitalik wrote a proposal on how to secretly use AI large language models

Title: Vitalik Wrote a Proposal to Teach You How to Secretly Use AI Large Models

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Everyone around the world is talking about AI, and the discussions about crypto on the timeline have quieted down quite a bit.

Meanwhile, ETH has been hovering around 2000 for nearly two months, and what Vitalik says or does seems to matter less and less.

But recently, I checked his X account and found that the influence of AI on him is more than just us. Over the past month, a large part of what he posted relates to AI, even down to specific technical solutions.

The most noteworthy is a proposal he co-authored with Davide Crapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, published on ethresear.ch on February 11, titled “ZK API Usage Credits.”

In one sentence: Use zero-knowledge proofs to let you call AI large models anonymously.

Currently, whether you’re using ChatGPT or calling Claude’s API, there’s only one way to pay:

Register an account, link your email, link your credit card.

Every conversation, every prompt you send, the platform knows it’s you. What you asked, when you asked, how many times — all tied to your real identity.

Vitalik and Crapis’s proposal offers an alternative.

1. Users deposit a sum of money into a smart contract, e.g., 100 USDC.

2. The contract registers this deposit on an encrypted list on the blockchain. Afterwards, each time you call the API, you don’t need to show your identity—just generate a zero-knowledge proof.

3. It can prove two things to the service provider: you’re on the list, and your balance is sufficient. But the proof itself doesn’t reveal which one on the list you are.

Service providers receive the money and can prevent abuse, but they never know who you are.

You can interpret this proposal as a statement that Vitalik believes in the AI era: users shouldn’t have to give up their identity to use an AI tool.

This proposal is still in the research stage and is far from implementation. Major AI model providers might not agree with this approach; meanwhile, the comment section is full of rebuttals and doubts, arguing that AI model companies will always find ways to identify you.

But I believe the significance of this proposal isn’t solely whether it can be realized.

Privacy has been a ten-year focus for Vitalik. From early support for Tornado Cash to promoting zero-knowledge proofs as a core technology for Ethereum, this thread has never been broken. However, in recent years, privacy in the crypto industry has lacked a sufficiently compelling story to carry it forward.

AI has filled that gap. When you talk to large models more than anyone else, privacy becomes a real need.

Vitalik Embraces AI

Since February, many of Vitalik’s posts on X have been about AI, to the point that it doesn’t seem like casual chatter.

Yesterday, he posted a long message saying he recently attended a cryptography conference where people cared about privacy, open source, anti-censorship… but had no emotional connection to blockchain.

Among that crowd, he conducted a thought experiment:

Forget “we are Ethereum community,” start from zero and think about where Ethereum is most useful.

His conclusion: the fundamental value of Ethereum is as a bulletin board—a place where anyone can write, anyone can read, and no one can modify or delete.

In the context of AI, this might be the most important statement Vitalik has made in the past two years.

We are entering an era of generating infinitely cheap content. Text, images, videos, identities—all can be mass-produced by AI. When everything can be forged, what becomes scarce?

All these questions ultimately point to the same place: a public, persistent, irreversible data layer. And a record that no one can tamper with is exactly what Ethereum can provide.

Over the past two years, skepticism about Ethereum can be summarized as: what do you have that others can’t replace?

Now, it seems Vitalik hasn’t directly answered this question.

However, over the past year, the Ethereum Foundation has done a few seemingly small things: assembled a 50-person privacy team, established a nearly 50-person privacy research group, released the Kohaku privacy framework, and appointed an AI lead; the 2026 roadmap prioritizes institutional privacy and faster transaction confirmation.

Looking back at his intense output over the past month, most of it revolves around privacy and efficiency issues for Ethereum in the AI context.

I believe 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 haven’t paid much attention to what he’s been saying lately.

But perhaps, in a few years, the thing worth paying attention to is this very period.