Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called for a rethink of how crypto and AI should come together, warning that a growing focus on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) risks missing the bigger picture.

In a post on X that revisits ideas he first outlined two years ago, Buterin argues that the accelerated push toward artificial general intelligence often resembles the kind of unchecked speed and scale that Ethereum itself was created to challenge.

Rather than racing to build more powerful AI systems, he says the goal should be to guide AI development in a way that protects human freedom, spreads power more evenly and avoids both extreme AI risks and everyday security failures.

Buterin outlines a near-term vision where Ethereum plays an important — though not exclusive — role as infrastructure for AI. That includes tools to allow people to interact with AI models more privately, reducing the need to trust centralized providers. For example, running models locally, making anonymous payments for AI services and using cryptography to verify how AI systems behave.

He also describes Ethereum as a way for AI systems to coordinate economically, allowing bots to pay other bots, post security deposits, build reputations and resolve disputes without relying on a single company. Paired with AI tools that help people evaluate decisions and outcomes, Buterin argues these systems could make long-discussed ideas like decentralized governance work at real-world scale.

“To me, Ethereum, and my own view of how our civilization should do AGI, are precisely about choosing a positive direction rather than embracing undifferentiated acceleration of the arrow,” Buterin wrote on X.

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