Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Monday that the prevailing framework around building artificial general intelligence is fundamentally flawed, calling instead for a decentralized, privacy-first approach to AI development that relies on Ethereum-based infrastructure for verification, coordination, and economic settlement.
What Happened: Buterin Rejects AGI Race
Buterin wrote in a post on X that "the frame of 'work on AGI' itself contains an error," arguing that the goal is typically treated as an undifferentiated competition where the only meaningful variable is who ends up on top.
He compared the phrase to vaguely describing Ethereum as just "working in finance" or "working on computing," saying it hides more substantive questions about direction and values.
Rather than pursuing raw acceleration, Buterin said AI development should focus on systems that "foster human freedom and empowerment" and ensure "the world does not blow up," consistent with his defensive-acceleration, or d/acc, framework.
He grouped the Ethereum-AI design space into four quadrants covering local LLM tooling, zero-knowledge payments for anonymous API calls, cryptographic privacy, client-side verification, on-chain dispute resolution, AI reputation standards, upgraded prediction markets, and governance systems.
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Why It Matters: Decentralized AI Rails
Joni Pirovich, founder and CEO of Crystal aOS, told Decrypt that "Ethereum becoming the default settlement layer for AI-to-AI interactions is realistic," adding that trust and coordination at the infrastructure and compliance levels "are even more important now than ever."
Midhun Krishna M, co-founder and CEO of LLM cost tracker TknOps.io, said Ethereum's role as an economic layer for AI interaction "is also directionally correct, but it will live mostly on rollups and app-specific L2s," and that decentralized agent economies will require "identity, reputation, and stake-weighted accountability, not just better interfaces."
The comments arrive as major AI labs continue to publicly push toward AGI and superintelligence, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman having said his company was confident it knew how to build AGI.
Buterin's alternative centers on verifiable infrastructure rather than larger models.
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