Organized & Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: As Ethereum enters its second decade, Vitalik Buterin appeared at Devcon in Mumbai, India, for an exclusive interview with financial media Moneycontrol. Fresh from a 76-hour fast, Vitalik deeply dissected the core upgrade roadmap of Ethereum for the next few years, titled “Lean Ethereum,” explaining why full-chain ZK and AI-driven formal verification will become the key foundation to counter computational threats.

In the face of frequent security incidents in exchanges and the potential crisis of AI breaking traditional cryptography, Vitalik clearly called for the industry to fully enter an extremely defensive “Bunker Mode,” placing core assets under an uncompromising security foundation; at the same time, he sharply reflected on the backward elimination caused by past regulatory policies in securities determinations, calling for regulation to focus on real external risks, rather than punishing builders who create substantial utility.

Guest: Vitalik Buterin (Co-founder of Ethereum)

Host: Debangana Ghosh (Senior Financial Journalist at Moneycontrol)

Podcast Source: Moneycontrol (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx7RwC_ZZX4)

Original Title: Crypto Must Survive Before It Wins: Vitalik Buterin on Ethereum's future, India's role and more

Broadcast Date: November 4, 2026

Key Points Summary

• Breaking Fast and Mumbai Gathering: Vitalik just completed a 76-hour deep fast and participated in Devcon 8 and the Cypherpunk Congress in Mumbai, pleased that the geek conference has expanded from a narrow focus on technical privacy to a broader field connecting global human rights and real concerns.
• Lean Ethereum: The core upgrade theme for Ethereum in the new decade is refinement and efficiency, relying on two major pillars: full-chain ZK (ZK for everything) and AI-driven formal verification, achieving extreme lightweight logic and mathematically zero vulnerabilities.
• Countering AI Cryptography Assaults: In response to concerns that AI might break traditional cryptographic algorithms without quantum computing, Ethereum L1 firmly adopts a highly conservative strategy, with core consensus fully bound to attack-resistant hash cryptography, allowing enterprises to anchor only hashes and validity proofs to achieve solid security.
• India's Web3 Paradigm Leap: India has the world’s most vibrant and eager young developer demographic, and the ecosystem is transitioning from early-stage speculative trading and pure DeFi to integrating national-level digital public infrastructure (DPI), Aadhaar identity, and proof of personhood into practical applications.
• Reaffirmation of Ethereum Foundation's Position: The Foundation adheres to the principle of decentralized servitude and will not act as the ecological overlord issuing commands; the adoption and growth roadmap of Ethereum in India will be completely developed by local builders, with the Foundation focusing solely on delivering base code and providing open-source funding.
• Entering “Bunker Mode” Comprehensively: Smart contract vulnerabilities have significantly decreased, but front-end hijacking, private key leaks, and centralized penetrations are frequent. All mainstream exchanges and custodians must retreat their defenses to bunkers, physically isolating key assets, assuming that all external systems are in hostile environments.
• Stern Warning on Hacker Funding Flows: If institutions allow funds to flow towards North Korea due to defensive loopholes, they will trigger the most destructive cleansing from the global regulatory system; security is the prerequisite for the industry’s survival, and compromising the defense baseline under the guise of operational agility is unacceptable.
• Legal Engineering Restructuring RWA and DeFi: Real-world assets are being significantly compressed through cross-jurisdictional consortium structures and on-chain rights litigation mechanisms, greatly reducing the trust risk of a single custodian, creating a financial new form that combines permissionless self-custody freedom with the risk control of traditional banks.
• Reflection on U.S. Regulatory Misalignment: Critically analyzing the absurd reverse elimination created by past securities enforcement, where teams with solid planning and honest commitments face severe penalties, while speculators relying purely on issuing meme coins evade responsibility. The first principle of regulation should constrain external social risks, not suffocate responsible entrepreneurial innovation.

II. Exciting Perspectives

• On Lean Ethereum and AI Transformation: “The core of Lean Ethereum is to fully ZK everything and use AI to promote full-chain formal verification. What used to take teams years of rigorous mathematical verification can now be accelerated exponentially with the powerful assistance of AI.”
• On Extreme Conservatism in Underlying Cryptography: “In the face of potential incursions from AI and quantum computing, Ethereum L1 has chosen the most stable and restrained path, with the core consensus strictly limited to the most conservative classic hash cryptography. For most institutions, you don’t need to move all your data on-chain; you just need to anchor hashes and proofs in Ethereum to obtain unassailable security.”
• On Ecological Power and Self-Driven Evolution: “The motto of the Ethereum Foundation is resolutely not to be the dominator of the ecosystem. The roadmap for Ethereum’s adoption in India always belongs entirely to the people of India.”
• On the Bunker Survival Rules for Crypto Exchanges: “Every resilient institution must thoroughly understand what Bunker Mode means for itself. If your defenses collapse and funds flow to North Korea, the regulatory storm will be catastrophic. You must lock your most core assets in the safest, most conservative foundation, even at the expense of speed.”
• On Regulatory Philosophy’s Root Cause: “The fundamental common-sense logic of regulation should be: if what you are doing poses real external risks to others, regulation should impose strict constraints; if you are just exploring and bearing risks yourself, regulation should let you fly.” The previous regulatory misalignment that forced teams not to make commitments but rather turn to meme coins is a painful lesson the entire industry must learn.

III. Main Text

1. Breaking Fast After 76 Hours and Experiences in Mumbai: From Geek Tech Privacy to Global Real Concerns

Debangana Ghosh: Vitalik, thank you very much for accepting an exclusive interview with Moneycontrol at Devcon 8 in Mumbai. I want to start with your recent situation; how have you spent your days in India? Also, did you successfully break your planned 72-hour fast?

Vitalik Buterin: Thank you. Yes, I ultimately held out for a full 76 hours before officially breaking my fast, and I feel very good now. This trip to India has been unforgettable, and I really enjoyed seeing so many passionate peers at Devcon, along with participating in the Cypherpunk Congress the day before the conference.

That conference had a significant impact on me. It has moved beyond merely discussing Ethereum’s architecture or narrow cryptographic technological privacy, to truly building a bridge that connects developers focusing on cryptographic technologies with actors concerned about non-technical privacy, human rights protection, and various real social issues. People from different countries and backgrounds coming together was also a great learning opportunity for me.

Of course, this is also an important reunion for the global core developer family of Ethereum. We conducted a series of intense discussions on underlying technologies, thoroughly reviewing the roadmap’s evolution in response to the rise of AI and threats from quantum computing. Seeing the Ethereum community maintaining such tight cohesion and forward-thinking after ten years of ups and downs felt really great.

2. Lean Ethereum: The Two Major Technical Pillars for Ethereum's New Decade

Debangana Ghosh: This past year, Ethereum officially crossed the milestone of its first decade. Looking at the next decade, what will the evolution blueprint of Ethereum be? I noticed that you have started frequently discussing the concept of “Lean Ethereum”; could you systematically break it down for us?

Vitalik Buterin: That’s right, Lean Ethereum is a complete systematic underlying architecture upgrade that Ethereum is vigorously promoting for the next few years. To summarize its core logic in one sentence, it is to thoroughly eliminate historical redundancies and refine the entire Ethereum protocol layer to a highly efficient modern state.

This strategy relies on two key pillars:

The first is “full-chain zero-knowledge proof implementation (ZK for everything).” We are systematically embedding zero-knowledge proof technologies such as ZK-SNARKs into every capillary of L1 consensus, state verification, and L2 scaling. This means network nodes no longer need to mechanically re-execute massive amounts of historical transaction computations; instead, they only require lightweight mathematical validity proofs to be verified within seconds, fundamentally resolving the centralization issues brought about by full node expansion.

The second is “advancing full-chain formal verification relying on AI (AI & Formal Verification for everything).” Formal verification has always been the Holy Grail in computer science for ensuring zero-defect code, but writing strict mathematical proofs for the entire Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and core consensus used to take years, even decades, of effort from top mathematicians and engineers.

Thanks to the exponential explosion in modern AI’s code understanding and reasoning capabilities, we can now generate and derive formal verification proofs at rates dozens of times faster. With the powerful leverage provided by AI, we can rapidly advance underlying radical upgrades while mathematically ensuring that every line of code written into the protocol is flawless.

3. Countering AI Computational Assaults: L1 Sticking to Conservative Hashes, Data Not Needing Full On-chain Transfer

Debangana Ghosh: Yesterday, your core researcher Justin Drake delivered an extremely sharp warning in his speech: the speed of AI evolution is beyond imagination, and it might even break existing asymmetric cryptographic systems with superior algorithms before quantum computing matures. In the face of this imminent potential threat, how do you envision the defense in the next-generation L1 and L2 architecture?

Vitalik Buterin: In response to this potential threat, Ethereum adopts an extremely rigorous and conservative underlying defense philosophy. We have made a very resolute choice at the core consensus layer that the fundamental security of the Ethereum blockchain itself will rely solely on the most conservative classic hash cryptography, which has been tested in real-world applications for decades.

The mathematical construction of hash functions is quite unique; it provides an exceptionally strong defense barrier against hash collisions, whether facing future quantum algorithms or AI-driven heuristic attacks. As long as the core consensus and state proofs are anchored in classic hashes, the foundational elements of the blockchain will never be easily shaken.

As for the upper-layer commercial and enterprise-level applications, such as supply chain data, medical records, or precision manufacturing documentation managed by traditional institutions using existing servers, the practical solution is quite elegant: enterprises do not need, nor should they, directly move large quantities of plaintext data on-chain.

You just need to maintain the business logic in your local database, submitting hashes of the data and zero-knowledge proofs (ZK Proof) to Ethereum L1 to ensure compliance and validity. In doing so, enterprises inherit the immutable decentralized credit endorsement of Ethereum while avoiding the risk of off-chain data being exposed to AI for brute decryption, which is precisely where the next-generation layered architecture demonstrates its greatest power.

4. India’s Web3 Paradigm Leap: Departing from Pure Speculation, Integrating DPI and Proof of Personhood

Debangana Ghosh: Once again, welcome back to India. From your early observations to now, how do you view the evolution of the Indian developer ecosystem? How large is the Ethereum community currently in India?

Vitalik Buterin: One of the most impressive qualities of India is its extremely large and vibrant young population structure. There are countless eager young engineers here, all hungry to use code to change their destinies; such raw drive is hard to find in many mature economies.

The deeper change lies in the application paradigms that developers are building. For a long time, most people understood Web3 only in terms of DeFi, and to be honest, a considerable portion of early DeFi essentially consisted of highly speculative hedging and liquidity games.

However, in today’s India, we are pleased to see an increasing number of teams shifting towards addressing deeper real-world problems. The most typical direction is the proof of personhood protocol and how to organically integrate the Ethereum protocol with India’s globally renowned national-level digital public infrastructure (DPI) and Aadhaar identity system.

In an era where AI deepfakes are rampant, proving “I am a real independent person” on-chain while protecting privacy with zero knowledge, and at the same time fostering micro-inclusive finance and genuine prediction markets, India’s exploration is at the forefront globally.

5. Reaffirmation of Foundation’s Position: The Adoption Roadmap Belongs Entirely to Local Indians

Debangana Ghosh: Given the massive market in India, does the Ethereum Foundation currently have plans to establish a full-time team or physical office here? In your view, how significant are the growth opportunities for Ethereum in the Indian market?

Vitalik Buterin: Since its founding, the Ethereum Foundation has adhered to a very clear philosophy of decentralization, which is that we will never serve as the central command or high-handed ruler issuing directives.

Our responsibilities are very restrained and clear: if local developers want to enhance the security of infrastructure, strengthen user privacy protection, and promote the implementation of open-source tools, the Foundation will fully support them with top-tier technical guidance, code reviews, and unencumbered research funding free from interest capture.

As for business expansion, local compliance, and product implementation, the Ethereum Foundation will not draft a top-down prescriptive blueprint. In a word: the roadmap for Ethereum’s implementation and adoption in India must and can only be determined by the people of India themselves. Only through bottom-up evolution rooted in real local pain points can a truly vibrant decentralized network develop.

6. Frequent Infiltrations in Exchanges: Crypto Institutions Must Fully Enter “Bunker Mode”

Debangana Ghosh: Vitalik, last week’s major cyber attack on leading centralized exchanges sounded another alarm for the entire industry; even institutions with extremely robust technical reserves appear riddled with vulnerabilities in the face of sophisticated cybercrime in the AI era. What is your advice on the current crypto security landscape?

Vitalik Buterin: Looking back over the past year and a half of the entire crypto security situation, we can see a very distinct dividing line: the good news is that thanks to mature toolchains, auditing mechanisms, and formal proofs, the number of hacker theft incidents caused by vulnerabilities in basic pure smart contract logic has dramatically decreased; but the bad news is that hackers’ firepower has completely shifted to front-end interactive interfaces, centralized operational nodes, multi-signature private key holders, and complex social engineering infiltrations.

Although hacker attacks are not rare, there is a growing internal consensus on security within the industry that mainstream institutions must immediately understand what “Bunker Mode” means for themselves.

So-called Bunker Mode requires all mainstream exchanges, large custodians, and financial institutions to establish worst-case scenario assumptions, positing that all front-end web pages, API interfaces, employee computers, and even cloud servers are under strict monitoring and infiltration by hostile forces.

Under this harsh assumption, your only way to survive is to freeze your most core customer assets in an untouched physical bunker: implementing extremely stringent multi-signature governance, introducing long and irrevocable on-chain time locks, thoroughly stripping away any single point of authority, and locking core assets with the hardest, most conservative structures.

This is not just a technical choice; it’s a crucial political-economic red line concerning life and death: if an institution lets its defenses collapse due to overconfidence, and stolen assets ultimately flow to North Korea, the consequences will be the most devastating reckoning from global multiple law enforcement agencies and financial regulators. In the current macro environment, any institution daring to sacrifice security for operational convenience and flexibility is essentially digging its own grave.

7. Legal Engineering Empowering RWA: Building Trust Between Centralized Reality and Anti-Censorship

Debangana Ghosh: As infrastructure matures, how do you view the evolution of crypto application forms in the next two to three years? Can we truly achieve pure decentralization, or must we make compromises in the real world?

Vitalik Buterin: Decentralization has never been a black-and-white religious doctrine; it’s a spectrum of trust constructed by engineering and law together.

In the past 18 months, we have witnessed the rapid expansion of Real World Assets (RWA) and compliant stablecoins. Indeed, from the perspective of idealistic native crypto geeks, as long as assets are mapped to the real world, they inevitably face the objective realities of legal entities and off-chain reserves, making it impossible to achieve a fully pure decentralization.

However, the exciting breakthrough lies in the maturity of “Legal Engineering.” Previously, users could only blindly bet on the moral standards of a single centralized issuer; now, through multi-jurisdictional consortium structures, any freezing or alteration of assets must obtain unanimous consent from multiple sovereign jurisdiction courts or trustees that are not subordinate to each other.

Furthermore, advanced projects are starting to design on-chain asset ownership directly as legally enforceable claims with global judicial validity. If the issuer exhibits errant behavior, holders can use the immutable smart contract records on-chain as solid evidence to submit to the court for asset preservation enforcement.

Our ultimate goal is to allow users in their daily experiences to trust only the Ethereum on-chain settlement and objective oracles unconditionally, compressing the trust radius concerning centralized entities to the limit. This will enable self-custodial wallets to enjoy permissionless absolute freedom while possessing security that rivals or even surpasses traditional banking systems.

8. Regulation’s Root Cause: Severe Punishment for Transferring External Risks and Correcting Reverse Elimination Against Builders

Debangana Ghosh: As the industry scale rises, global regulatory footsteps are rapidly accelerating, especially in mainstream jurisdictions like the U.S. How do you personally view the boundaries of crypto regulation? Is it possible for a reasonable universal regulatory framework to emerge?

Vitalik Buterin: Seeking some unified global regulatory framework is itself a dangerous endeavor. The other side of the coin means that a tiny elite of bureaucrats will impose their narrow will and values over billions of people worldwide, ultimately eliminating institutional competition and individual choice freedom.

If we return to the first principles of regulation, I believe reasonable regulatory standards are actually quite straightforward, and should be self-evident common sense: if your actions are imposing enormous uncontrollable risks onto society and others, regulation should severely constrain you; if your actions are entirely self-contained, bear all consequences yourself, and do not externalize systemic risks, regulation should leave you completely free to explore.

Regrettably, looking back on the regulatory practices of the past few years, particularly in some jurisdictions’ rigid securities enforcement, the reality often leads to absurd reverse elimination:

If a startup team, driven by technical ideals, solidly lays out a clear technical roadmap and honestly commits to supporters about future product planning and governance, regulatory agencies react by magnifying their actions, accusing them of issuing unregistered securities and imposing heavy penalties; in contrast, someone who blatantly claims on social media, “We do nothing, make no commitments, this is just a pure meme air coin,” can brazenly exploit the legal grey area for speculation.

This reverse elimination forces genuine teams wanting to create real projects to refrain from making any serious commitments to their communities, ultimately thrusting the entire ecosystem into a mire of poor-quality speculation without consumer protection. The regulatory system must reflect on this misalignment and realign its focus on the real external risks, protecting the diligent technical pioneers, so that the crypto industry can truly achieve responsible long-term prosperity.