Buterin Flags Doxing Risk in X Country Feature, Ethereum RISC-V Debate

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has criticized X’s new X country feature that automatically reveals users’ countries, warning this forced doxing poses significant user privacy and security risk for high-value crypto holders. Joined by Uniswap’s Hayden Adams and Summer.fi CTO Andrei David, Buterin argued the feature exposes individuals to potential stalking, extortion or government pressure without consent. Some users can disable the X country feature or switch to broader regions in their settings. Separately, Offchain Labs challenged Buterin’s proposal to adopt the RISC-V instruction set as Ethereum’s core execution layer. In a detailed post, Arbitrum developers argued that WebAssembly (WASM) provides stronger type safety, mature tooling and broad hardware compatibility for smart contracts and zero-knowledge proofs. They advocated separating a delivery ISA from a proving ISA, demonstrating a WASM-to-RISC-V pipeline for proofs without embedding RISC-V in Layer 1. With zero-knowledge proving costs dropping, Offchain Labs insists long-term adaptability and security favor WASM over locking Ethereum to a single, evolving ISA. These debates underscore ongoing tensions between privacy, security and scalability in crypto, highlighting how platform changes and technical upgrades can affect user trust and network resilience.