It’s Vitalik’s birthday today — and he’s optimistic on crypto-AI integrations

AI-related tokens were up following the Ethereum co-founder’s blog post

share

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin turns 30 today after having spent much of his 20s ideating and developing the network that mainstreamed NFTs, dapps and DeFi. He published a more existential blog post today reflecting on the past decade, but yesterday, Buterin weighed in via his blog on the software that may come to define the coming decade — AI.

Buterin believes the most immediately promising AI and crypto intersection comes where AIs participate in systems as individuals, like autonomous trading bots trading on decentralized exchanges, for instance. The question that Buterin gives the most attention, however, is whether AI should be used for decision making — and how blockchain technology may fare when training AI decision makers.

Read more: Funding Wrap: AI startups score high in 2024 thus far

Pointing to crypto’s interest in prediction markets like Polymarket, Buterin makes the case that AI trained to search the internet could use prediction markets to provide “info defense” against false information. Put simply, AI with an economic incentive to be correct can participate in a market that can gesture at the truth without requiring a centralized authority to do so.

The potential shortcoming here, in Buterin’s view, is that AIs can be taught to be wrong through adversarial machine learning, where someone learns how a system works and biases it in a certain direction. Technology like zero-knowledge proofs seem to apply, but there are two issues with applying crypto technology to AI development.  

AI models require a lot of computing power, and using cryptographic methods on certain layers of these models could increase the resource drain by a factor of 200, Buterin writes.

Read more: Bitcoin ETF tweets and Vitalik’s car crash: How news real and fake moves crypto prices

Buterin is also worried about adversarial machine learning but believes it can be overcome by hiding access to the model itself and the data used to train it. 

The training of and access to AI models could helpfully be governed by a DAO that could financially reward members for their participation, Buterin suggests. 

Read more: 3 DAO governance trends to watch in 2024

In a way, Buterin’s concerns regarding AI and crypto echo those sometimes lobbied at Ethereum’s computational intensiveness and potential attack vectors. Despite his concerns, he thinks that in a world where AI is already centralized and opaque, it certainly couldn’t hurt to try integrating AI with crypto.

“I don’t think there is a large chance that the blockchain community experimenting with AIs more will be the thing that contributes to making it worse,” Buterin writes. 

Crypto markets made the most of Buterin’s blinkered optimism on AI and crypto. AI-related tokens Bittensor (TAO) and Render (RNDR) are both up double-digits this week.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

  • Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
  • Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
  • Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
  • 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
  • Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
  • The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
Tags

Upcoming Events

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates (5).png

Research

Outside of stablecoins, the value of tokenized assets sits below $20B, dominated by the following asset classes: private credit, US Treasuries, commodities, institutional alternative funds, stocks, non-US government debt, and corporate bonds. In the coming months, we see the greatest opportunities in the tokenization of illiquid markets, particularly private equity. However, the successful integration of offchain assets into blockchain ecosystems relies heavily on clear and consistent regulatory frameworks, with purpose-built infrastructure to support it.

article-image

Coinbase Asset Management and One River CEO Eric Peters explains why crypto’s not yet focused on fundamentals

article-image

Over the past 24 hours, PumpSwap’s largest liquidity pool by volume contains tokens with the tickers DOGEMOON and ballscoin

article-image

10T Holdings’ Dan Tapiero predicts crypto listings on exchanges are a “mini step” for value moving onchain

article-image

The S&P 500 was mostly flat after a month of losses, and the Nasdaq has been slowly gaining

article-image

Movement Labs is once again at the core of some criticism after it declined to name a market maker offboarded by Binance

article-image

Experts discuss the future of crypto ETFs as Trump puts “money where his mouth is”