Why Isn’t Vitalik Pumping ETH? His Vibe-Coded Billboard Asks Too
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin constructed a small nameless billboard demo utilizing zero-knowledge proofs. He joked that he retains choosing enjoyable facet tasks over selling ETH.
Buterin known as the venture vibe coded. He described the meant conduct in plain language and let AI instruments write a lot of the code. Vitalik constructed it on Aztec, a privacy-focused community that runs on Ethereum’s underlying cryptography.
An Old Privacy Idea Returns
Buterin sketched the nameless billboard with the moderation idea in a 2022 essay on zero-knowledge proofs for privateness. The concept imagined a message board the place anybody may submit anonymously. A moderation system may nonetheless block rule violations. It would by no means be taught who posted what.
Buterin retains returning to this privateness theme. Earlier this month, he warned that the EU Chat Control revival threatens on a regular basis cybersecurity. The proposal would revive necessary scanning of personal messages for unlawful content material. He argued that non-public instruments want stronger safety, not weaker guidelines. His broader Lean Ethereum roadmap leans on comparable cryptographic constructing blocks.
How the Billboard Works
The GitHub repository, named aztec_experiments, holds three working prototypes. They embrace a token contract, a voting oracle, and the billboard itself. The billboard depends on cryptographic nullifiers constructed with a hashing methodology known as poseidon2. These nullifiers verify a poster’s proper to submit. They additionally block double-posting, all with out revealing an id.
A personal submit operate checks eligibility towards a linked token contract. The test occurs earlier than something reaches the chain. This strategy echoes vibe coding. Andrej Karpathy popularized the time period earlier than he not too long ago joined Anthropic. Buterin defined the construct himself within the submit that began the thread.
A Familiar Pattern for Buterin
The billboard’s personal demo submit carried a joke. It requested why Buterin is all the time doing enjoyable issues as an alternative of pumping his personal coin. The joke matches a sample. Vitalik spent a lot of 2026 on facet tasks unrelated to Ethereum’s price. These included an anonymous authorship challenge that outdoors researchers finally solved, plus early chapters of a decentralized governance novel.
The timing sharpened the joke. Ether has traded nicely beneath its prior cycle highs this yr, and Wall Street’s bull case for ETH has drawn way more consideration than any single facet venture. Buterin appeared unbothered by the distinction, selecting cryptography experiments over pushing Ethereum.
Vitalik Buterin has even talked about writing a fantasy novel underneath a verified pseudonym. He would do that if his authorship may sometime be confirmed the identical approach, with out exposing his actual id. Whether the billboard demo grows past a prototype stays unclear. Still, Buterin’s GitHub historical past suggests these facet tasks will not be slowing down.
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