Buterin lays out Ethereum's 'cryptographic world computer' 2030 vision

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a sweeping vision for the network's 2030 architecture, titled "The cryptographic world computer", describing a system that combines a blockchain with cryptographic proofs and networks of computers working off-chain. The goal: let different computers process different transactions without forcing every node to repeat the same calculations, breaking the scaling constraint that adding machines doesn't add capacity.

• Proofs would let one computer show it followed the rules while others verify the result far faster than repeating the original work, enabling parallel processing with independent checks.
• Privacy plans extend to balance checks and wallet activity, hiding which accounts a user follows when querying an outside server.
• Buterin said the transformation accelerates after the planned Hegotá upgrade, though proofs must get cheaper and parallel work needs secure coordination.

The post revives an approach Ethereum developers pursued a decade ago, when verification was the missing ingredient.