Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Builds ‘Paranoid Mode’ to Hide AI Secrets
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin unveiled an experimental “paranoid mode” for his AI agent on October 16, 2026, designed to obscure users, request origins and payments. The public-code setup combines Tor, cover traffic, local prompt rewriting and zkAPI, according to BeInCrypto. Each conversation gets a separate Tor circuit, while zkAPI payments run on Ethereum mainnet and accept ETH and USDC. The system does not provide complete anonymity: providers can see rewritten prompts, and traffic timing could expose requests. Buterin said lower zkAPI fees are coming; the prototype offers no evidence of widespread adoption or an immediate benefit to ETH’s price.