Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that society’s growing reliance on digital infrastructure could erode public trust unless technologies are built on open and verifiable foundations.
In a Sept. 24 blog post, he argued that healthcare systems, civic tools, and personal technologies face heightened risks when users cannot see how the systems that govern them work.
Buterin said the rapid pace of global innovation has deepened humanity’s dependence on digital tools, from health trackers to encrypted messaging. That reliance, he cautioned, can create dangerous concentrations of power if corporations or governments control the underlying infrastructure.
To avoid that outcome, he urged developers to prioritize open-source design and verifiability that end users can check directly.
According to him:
“[These technologies] benefits are too great, and in a highly competitive global environment, civilizations that reject these technologies will lose first competitiveness and then sovereignty to those that embrace them. However, in addition to offering powerful benefits, these technologies deeply affect power dynamics, both within and between countries.”
Open systems applications
Buterin pointed to healthcare as a sector where the stakes are particularly high.
He explained that proprietary health data platforms leave individuals dependent on corporate gatekeepers, who can charge fees or block access altogether.
By contrast, open and verifiable systems would allow defensive biotech to fight pandemics while preserving public trust in the data behind the response.
He also warned that insecure data systems create direct threats to safety. Stolen health records could enable insurers to exploit customers or criminals to target victims based on location tracking. He noted:
“If this kind of personal health data is insecure, someone who hacks it can blackmail you over any health issues, optimize pricing of insurance and healthcare products to extract value from you, and if the data includes location tracking they know where to wait for you to kidnap you.”
In the case of brain-computer interfaces, a successful hack could allow hostile actors to read or manipulate a person’s thoughts, a scenario he stressed is no longer science fiction.
Buterin argued that the same risks extend to civic technology and personal devices.
According to him, transparent voting systems, encrypted communication, and open-source operating systems could counter centralization and empower users, while closed systems increase the risk of manipulation and lock-in.
The Ethereum co-founder opined:
“Open tools for building need to be widely available, and the infrastructure and code bases need to be freely licensed to allow others to build on top.”
Cryptography solution
Buterin acknowledged that achieving his vision of “open and verifiable” societies will require advanced cryptography, including zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption, and formally verified hardware.
According to him:
“ZK-SNARKs, fully homomorphic encryption and obfuscation – are so powerful because they let you compute arbitrary programs on data in multi-party contexts, and give guarantees about the output, while keeping the data and the computation private.”
While these systems may sacrifice some performance and challenge standard business models, he insisted that the trade-offs are worthwhile.
Buterin proposed starting with domains where trust is more important than speed, such as secure communications and healthcare applications. He argued that developers can create models that gradually extend across the digital economy by first embedding openness and verifiability in these areas.
However, Buterin concluded that:
“It is unrealistic to achieve maximum security and openness for everything. But we can start by ensuring that these properties are available in those domains where they really matter.”