Vitalik Buterin: 60% chance of efficient cryptography by 2030

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expects advanced cryptographic techniques to become considerably more practical within this decade. On X, he shares his vision for the future of three techniques he calls the ‘Egyptian God Protocols’: SNARK, FHE and iO. He estimates a 60% chance that all three can be run with less than ten times the computing power of ordinary calculations, which would make them usable for real-world applications.

In brief:

• Buterin puts the chance at 60% that SNARK, FHE and iO work with less than ten times the normal computing power
• He expects SNARKs with such low overhead to be achievable by the end of this decade
• That level has already been reached with specialised hash functions and certain AI applications

Three cryptographic techniques with lofty ambitions

The three techniques Buterin discusses each have their own role in the world of privacy preservation and verification. SNARKs are mathematical proofs that allow you to demonstrate that a calculation is correct without disclosing its contents. FHE, in full Fully Homomorphic Encryption, makes it possible to perform calculations on encrypted data without first decrypting it. iO, or indistinguishability obfuscation, encrypts the operation of software itself so that its logic remains hidden.

The major obstacle for all three is the enormous extra computing power they still require. Buterin puts the chance at just 33% that this extra burden for large calculations virtually disappears, which he describes as an overhead of 1+ε. That would mean the additional cost of cryptographic security becomes negligibly small relative to the calculation itself.

SNARKs as the most promising candidate

Buterin is most optimistic about SNARKs. He expects a good chance that this technique will fall below the threshold of ten times the normal computing power by the end of 2030. As a reference, he points to specialised hash functions, where that level has already been reached, and to certain forms of inference in large language models.

These are, however, strongly held personal expectations that currently fall outside the consensus of the cryptography community, as Buterin himself acknowledges. How realistic his timeline is will have to become apparent in the coming years from scientific research and practical implementations.