Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, warned that increasing social dependence on digital infrastructure could undermine public trust unless technology is built on open and verifiable foundations.
In a blog post on September 24th, he argued that healthcare systems, civic tools, and personal technologies face increased risk if users can’t understand how the systems that govern them work.
Buterin said the rapid pace of global innovation has deepened human reliance on digital tools, from health trackers to encrypted messaging. He warned, he warned, but it can create dangerous focus when businesses and governments manage the underlying infrastructure.
To avoid that outcome, he urged developers to prioritize open source design and verifiability that could be checked directly by end users.
According to him:
“The benefits (these technologies) are too great. In a very competitive global environment, civilizations that reject these technologies will lose their competitiveness first and then the sovereignty of those who accept them. However, in addition to providing strong benefits, these technologies deeply affect the dynamics of power both domestically and nationally.”
Open System Applications
Buterin pointed to healthcare as a sector with a particularly high interest.
He explained that its own health data platform leaves individuals dependent on individual gatekeepers.
In contrast, open and verifiable systems allow defensive biotechnology to combat the pandemic while maintaining public confidence in the data behind the response.
He also warned that secure data systems create a direct threat to safety. Stolen health records allow insurers to misuse clients or criminals to target victims based on location tracking. He pointed out:
“If this type of personal health data is unsafe, those who hack it can blackmail you about health issues and will extract value from you by optimizing insurance and medical product pricing.
In the case of brain computer interfaces, if hacking is successful, an adversary actor can read and manipulate people’s thoughts. The scenarios he highlighted are no longer science fiction.
Buterin argued that the same risks extend to civic technology and personal equipment.
He said transparent voting systems, encrypted communications, and open source operating systems can counter centralization and empower users, while closed systems increase the risk of operation and lock-in.
The co-founders of Ethereum are:
“Open tools for buildings need to be widely available. Infrastructure and codebases must be freely licensed to allow others to build on the top.”
Encryption Solutions
Buterin acknowledged that achieving the vision of a “open and verifiable” society requires sophisticated encryption, including zero knowledge proof, isomorphic encryption, and formally verified hardware.
According to him:
“ZK-snarks, fully homomorphic encryption and obfuscation, is extremely powerful because it allows you to calculate any program about data in a multiparty context and provide guarantees about output, while keeping data and calculations private.”
While these systems may sacrifice some performance and challenge standard business models, he argued that trade-offs are worth it.
Buterin suggested that trust starts in domains where speed is more important than speed, such as secure communications and healthcare applications. He argued that by embedding openness and verifiability into these areas, developers can create models that gradually expand across the digital economy.
However, Buterin concluded:
“Achieving maximum security and openness for everything is unrealistic, but we start by making these properties available in domains that are truly important.”
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