Vitalik Buterin Details zkSNARKs' Role in Ethereum Privacy, Scalability and Broader Internet Use

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said at the ETH ChiangMai togETHer event on Tuesday that zero-knowledge proofs and zkSNARKs can enhance privacy, scalability and verification for blockchains and wider internet applications by enabling computation to be checked without exposing underlying data. He highlighted examples including using zk proofs with modern passports to confirm citizenship from embedded chips without disclosing extra personal information, and improving scalability by publishing hashed data instead of full datasets to speed up validation. Buterin also pointed to offchain use cases such as verifying open-source algorithms and large-scale computations while keeping code and sensitive data hidden, and said he expects zkSNARKs to see growing adoption over the next five years. In outlining his vision for a "cypherpunk principled nonugly Ethereum", Buterin said he plans to layer this privacy-focused, censorship-resistant design onto the existing network, prioritizing zk prover friendliness and simpler consensus while maintaining interoperability and avoiding fragmentation.