Vitalik: AI will become the new user interface, and directly executing complex on-chain operations may become the norm.

BlockBeats news, October 6 — Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said at the OKX Now 2026 summit in Singapore that AI is demonstrating the ability to break out of sandboxes, attack websites, and discover software vulnerabilities, while also helping the Ethereum protocol find vulnerabilities, implement complex cryptography, and conduct formal verification. He believes that a higher level of security assurance will become feasible and will also become necessary, because AI will continuously discover exploitable vulnerabilities in systems.

Vitalik revealed that about a month ago, he updated ENS information without using a user interface (UI) for the first time, asking only a local AI agent to write a script, and the operation was completed in about 5 minutes. He expects that directly executing complex on-chain operations through AI will gradually become the norm, and AI will become the new user interface in more scenarios.

Taking the Safe-related hacking incident involving about $1.4 billion in losses as an example, he pointed out that the attack targeted the interaction layer between users and on-chain systems, not the on-chain contracts. Directly handling transactions through AI may reduce the risks brought by relying on web interfaces, but it will also introduce new challenges, including whether AI itself is secure, whether it can resist prompt injection, and whether it correctly understands on-chain operations. As interaction methods change rapidly, some problems will be solved, while new security challenges will also emerge.