Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin urged Elon Musk on Jul. 11 to rebuild X into a coordination hub where ordinary people help shape global rules for artificial intelligence.
Key Points:
- Buterin wants X retooled to broker AI deals that bypass governments, corporate leaders, and elite institutions.
- He backs pre-agreed pause triggers, including unemployment above 25%, super-pandemics, or lethal autonomous drones at scale.
- The proposal could lift interest in prediction markets, on-chain governance, and zero-knowledge tools.
Buterin Pitches X As Global AI Governance Hub
The Ethereum creator wrote in a lengthy Jul. 11 thread that the superintelligence debate has hardened into two camps with incompatible worldviews. One side expects superintelligence of some kind to emerge by 2040. The other treats AI as normal technology and waves off both existential warnings and fears of concentrated power.
The thread responded to AI 2040: Plan A, a scenario the AI Futures Project published this week urging Washington and Beijing to cooperate on delaying superintelligence until 2040. Buterin admitted he has no firm view on how fast the technology will move, saying he feels deep uncertainty about which world we are living in.
His answer is a set of pre-agreed triggers. If unemployment climbs above 25%, a super-pandemic erupts, or lethal autonomous drones deploy at scale, both camps would commit in advance to reopen the case for slowdowns or pauses. Skeptics would sign on expecting the triggers never to fire, while worriers would bet the opposite. He also said he remains uncomfortable with the push from some AI companies for one group to hold controlling global dominance.
The message to Musk was blunt, framed as a call for coordination rather than regulation. Buterin argued X should be retooled to broker grand bargains that bypass big-country governments, corporate chiefs, and nonprofit intellectuals, aiming to "give more people a voice."
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Prediction Markets Eye New Role In AI Oversight
The proposal grows out of his defensive acceleration framework, known as d/acc, which channels investment into pandemic preparedness, secure open hardware, formal verification, and cryptography. In January 2025 he proposed cutting global computing power by up to 99% for one to two years as a last-resort brake on dangerous AI. The same logic now shapes his platform pitch.
Crypto infrastructure could benefit if Musk listens. Verifiable forecasts on trigger events could run through prediction markets such as Polymarket, while zero-knowledge proofs and on-chain voting could supply the open, auditable plumbing Buterin describes.
The appeal caps a volatile stretch between the two men. Buterin praised Community Notes and prediction markets in 2024 as "the two flagship social epistemic technologies" of the decade, then warned in December that X risked becoming a "death star laser for coordinated hate sessions." In January he urged Musk to verify algorithm changes with zero-knowledge cryptography instead of merely publishing code.
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