Vitalik Buterin's latest long article warns about "smartwatch data monopoly": far more dangerous than Worldcoin, Open Source and verifiable is true freedom.

Vitalik Buterin recently proposed “full-stack openness + verifiability” as a solution to the digital wave in his latest blog, covering three major areas: health, finance, and public governance (background: V God responded to the Ethereum staking withdrawal traffic jam: latency is essential for protecting blockchain security, and there is room for improvement in user experience) (background information: V God revealed his disappointment in the development of AI Agents: emphasis should be placed on decentralization, open source, and user feedback). Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reminded the public in his latest blog on September 24 that the internet has penetrated every corner of reality, and the moment for decision-making is approaching: should humanity move towards a digital prison laid by monopolies and backdoors, or choose a free society based on openness and verifiability? He pointed out that the Trump administration's rise to power and the escalation of geopolitical tensions further highlight the importance of digital sovereignty, and open solutions will be the core strategy to safeguard individual and national autonomy. Trust gaps in the digital wave Buterin believes that countries holding technological production capabilities have an advantage in competition, while closed platforms, despite providing convenience to developers, lay the fuse for trust collapse. When backdoors and single points of failure cannot be verified externally, power concentration will amplify risks. He quoted political philosophy to remind: “The sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” In other words, if the underlying rules are in the hands of a few, they can define exceptions at will, and the public will lose the space for negotiation. Therefore, software, hardware, and even biotechnology must be “truly open” and verifiable by end-users to avoid power imbalance. Health and finance: two litmus tests for full-stack openness The disparities in the medical field were laid bare during the pandemic, as the “Covid Vaccine Coverage Map” showed that high-income countries secured vaccines first, while poor countries were forced to wait. Buterin mentioned that PopVax, supported by Balvi, adopts open design to reduce costs and increase transparency. Data collected by future devices such as smartwatches will be hundreds of times larger than Worldcoin's scale. If the system is closed, data centralization will put individual privacy under unprecedented pressure. The blockchain world has long understood that “not your private key, not your assets.” Multisignature and hardware wallets are examples of using openness and verifiability to disperse risks. Buterin also warned that micro-architecture vulnerabilities or AI backdoors could lurk in closed-source environments for many years; only comprehensive openness can allow researchers to discover issues in a timely manner. The exploration of hardware verification, such as non-destructive chip testing, is a practical step towards this goal. The dilemma and solutions of public governance Electronic voting is considered a high-risk scenario. The Estonian case was questioned precisely because the black box software did not allow voters to verify personally. Buterin pointed out: “Doing nothing will become increasingly unrealistic.” Technology will inevitably enter the public sector; the question is what framework to adopt. Open-source tools can allow local communities to adjust processes, strengthen oversight, and ensure that court rulings and public surveillance have observable and contestable conditions of “common knowledge.” If the public cannot trust the process, no matter how perfect the outcome is, social stability cannot be maintained. Buterin further proposed the concept of “digital watchdogs”: surveillance cameras, anti-drone systems, and even biometric sensors should be open source, allowing research institutions and civil organizations to verify them legally. This resonates with the spirit of the Hacker Ethic. The technological path of retro-futurism Buterin's so-called “retro-futurism” brings the freedom of “disassemblable, repairable, and modifiable” from the 1900s into the cloud era. The blueprint he outlines includes: personal devices that combine the security of hardware wallets with the convenience of smartphones, encrypted instant messaging, standardized on-chain financial assets, open-source global networks (like Starlink), devices with built-in open-source LLM assistants, and formal verification operating systems. To implement these visions, cryptographic technologies such as zk-SNARKs and fully homomorphic encryption are needed, as well as establishing verifiable processes on the hardware side, such as X-ray scanning chips and optical verification. Buterin suggests initially focusing on applications that do not pursue extreme performance, creating a fully open, security-oriented tech stack, because truly high-security work usually does not rely on high-speed computing. He finally reminds that closed-source solutions are rapidly expanding, and the time left for the open-source community is limited. Only by accelerating investment and communicating to the public that “better methods already exist” can we avoid being dragged into a future dominated by closed architectures. Vitalik Buterin's latest lengthy article is not just a technical memorandum but a call to public interest: openness and verifiability are no longer ideals but necessary conditions for maintaining freedom and ensuring security. In the face of the digital wave, humanity still has choices, but decision-making must commence immediately. Related reports V God calls for Ethereum to abandon Optimistic 'designated ZK as orthodox,' is it vision or a dictatorship that stifles ecology? V God: Taiwan, World ID's single ZK identity is risky, must move towards diversified digital identities V God evaluates the collapse of the Nordic 'cashless society': Ethereum can serve as a digital backup <V God’s latest long article warns 'smartwatch personal data monopoly': far more dangerous than Worldcoin, open source verifiability is true freedom> This article was first published on BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.