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Obfuscation and Blockchains: Trustless Third Parties Still Years Away
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says obfuscation could remove trusted third parties. The problem: its "galactic" runtime blocks deployment. Lattice fixes may cut years off the path.
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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin described obfuscation as one of the strongest ideas in cryptography in a June 29 blog post. He warned it remains far from practical use.
Obfuscation turns a program into an encrypted version that still gives the same outputs. Users can run the program without seeing how it works inside, Buterin wrote.
He focused on indistinguishability obfuscation, or iO. Two programs with the same function should look impossible to tell apart after obfuscation. Developers could then build private systems where users do not need to trust a central operator.
Obfuscation alone cannot manage stateful assets such as money. An obfuscated program can be copied. If a program controls money and someone copies it, the system cannot know which version holds the real balance, Buterin wrote.
Blockchains fill that gap. They provide a shared state that users can verify. The combination supports private, secure and collusion-resistant systems. Buterin used voting as one example, where users could avoid relying on a committee that must behave honestly.