Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has assigned a 60% probability that SNARKs, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) will eventually operate at less than 10 times the cost of ordinary computation. He shared the forecast on September 6, describing it as an optimistic and very-non-consensus view of cryptography's long-term development. Buterin defines overhead using total energy expenditure plus amortized computing costs rather than execution time alone.
He also gave a second forecast: a 33% chance that all three technologies could approach 1+ε overhead for average real-world computation. At sufficient scale, the added cost of cryptographic protection would become arbitrarily small relative to performing the underlying computation normally.
The three technologies solve different problems. SNARKs allow compact cryptographic proofs that a computation was performed correctly, and they already support Ethereum zero-knowledge rollups and zkVM infrastructure. FHE allows computation on encrypted data without decryption. iO aims to hide a program's internal logic while preserving its functionality, a technology Buterin has previously called cryptography's final boss.
Buterin said there is a good chance at least one of the three technologies reaches single-digit overhead by the end of the decade, with SNARKs the most likely candidate. FHE remains more computationally intensive; a 2026 benchmark required multi-gigabyte cryptographic artifacts and more than six hours of encrypted computation for a small BERT workload. Practical iO is much further from deployment.
Cheaper SNARKs could strengthen Ethereum's proof-based verification model. Validators could verify a succinct proof that a block was executed correctly instead of re-running every computation, which becomes more valuable as Ethereum raises its gas limit. Cheaper FHE could enable confidential shared-state applications such as private automated market makers, confidential lending pools, and sealed-bid auctions. Practical iO could eventually conceal program logic itself and reduce reliance on trusted intermediaries.
Christopher Inks, founder of Texas West Capital, said cheaper cryptography could allow proprietary financial models to run on outside infrastructure without exposing private data, model mechanics, or intellectual property. He argued such systems could weaken intermediaries including auditors, custodians, clearinghouses, and exchanges.
The 60% estimate is not an Ethereum roadmap or scheduled upgrade. It reflects what Buterin believes may ultimately be technologically possible, while Ethereum's privacy roadmap can advance through private reads, private writes, and private proving even before a universal cryptographic cost collapse.
