The Ethereum co-founder says indistinguishability obfuscation could one day act like a “trustless trusted third party,” but today’s versions remain far too slow for real use.

Vitalik Buterin proposes using program obfuscation with blockchains to enable near-trustless private on-chain voting, eliminating trusted committees in DAO

Vitalik Buterin said obfuscation is cryptography’s “final boss,” citing impractical iO schemes with “literally galactic” runtimes.

The Ethereum co-founder says indistinguishability obfuscation could one day act like a “trustless trusted third party,” but today’s versions remain far too slow for real use.

Vitalik Buterin calls obfuscation cryptography's hardest unsolved problem and explains why cracking it changes everything.