Vitalik maps four Ethereum priorities for the AI era and sets two non‑negotiable limits

Ethereum co‑founder Vitalik Buterin outlined an updated vision for Ethereum×AI, highlighting four development priorities and two non‑negotiable red lines. The two red lines are: 1) preserve human freedom and agency (avoid AI displacing humans or concentrating unassailable power), and 2) prevent catastrophic systemic failure (guard against AGI doomsday or attack scenarios where offense overwhelms defense). The four strategic areas for Ethereum in an AI world are: 1) trustless, privacy‑preserving human‑AI interactions (local LLMs, ZK proofs for API calls, cryptographic privacy); 2) Ethereum as the economic layer for AI (on‑chain payments, robot‑to‑robot hiring, collateral, dispute resolution, ERC‑8004 identity/reputation/attestation registry — launched Jan 29, with >24,549 AI agents registered in under two weeks); 3) realizing cypherpunk ideals via AI (local verification, AI auditing of smart contracts and dApp UIs, minimizing need to trust intermediaries); 4) improved markets and governance enabled by LLMs (prediction/decision markets, scaled collective decision‑making). Vitalik committed 16,384 ETH (~$45M) from his holdings to fund privacy tech and open‑source infrastructure (ZK, FHE, open chips, verifiable stacks) and declared 2026 a year to “reclaim compute autonomy,” shifting personal tools away from centralized ecosystems and experimenting with local LLMs. He also warned about governance risks of using AI to allocate funds and proposed competitive “information finance” markets with randomized audits and human juries. Vitalik framed the plan as value‑driven selective acceleration (d/acc): accelerate technologies that strengthen defense and decentralization. The initiative is strategic for Ethereum’s role as a trust, economic coordination, and defensive layer in the AI era, but successful implementation and market effects will require time and broad ecosystem adoption.