Vitalik Buterin's Forecasts on the Future of Ethereum and AI

At the OKX NOW 2026 conference in Singapore, Vitalik Buterin stated that Ethereum transactions will become significantly cheaper and more private. According to his forecast, this will happen within two years.

Artificial intelligence will become the new user interface for blockchain.

Buterin expects tight integration of AI with blockchain, which may cause familiar applications to disappear. He shared that he updated his ENS without a traditional interface: a local AI agent wrote a script and completed the operation in five minutes.

Applications may be created directly by AI models, and network interactions will increasingly occur between bots.

ZK technologies will continue to develop rapidly, and most people will use zero-knowledge proof solutions.

AI poses a serious security threat as models find software vulnerabilities, but it also helps verify Ethereum protocols.

In the AI era, privacy will become critically important, requiring new standards for hardware and software protection.