Vitalik Buterin: The AI ​​era needs encrypted privacy mechanisms to protect API access patterns

PANews reported on March 8th that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that with the increasing prevalence of AI agents, cryptographic privacy technologies are crucial for protecting users' API call patterns and behavioral data. He pointed out that even with local AI agents, if external services can see all search or API call records, they can still infer the user's ongoing activities.

Vitalik believes that a preliminary solution is to forward requests via mixnets to hide the source of access. However, service providers may require anti-abuse mechanisms and pay-per-use models due to DoS attacks, and in reality, these payment methods often rely on credit cards or stablecoin systems lacking privacy protection. Therefore, he emphasizes the need for crypto payment solutions with privacy features.

He further pointed out that privacy protection needs to be considered from the **full stack** level, with the local AI agent layer being particularly crucial. Vitalik likened it to the issue of healthy lifespan: if there are multiple detrimental factors, addressing them one by one will bring cumulative benefits; similarly, measures to reduce the risk of data breaches will produce similar compounding effects.