Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik: AI Will Become the New Interface
Vitalik Buterin stated on October 6 at OKX NOW in Singapore that artificial intelligence will increasingly become the new user interface in various scenarios. This remark was made during TOKEN2049 week, where OKX summarized his judgment: on-chain robots provide quotes, and users' own robots assess and approve the parts that meet their needs.
He provided an example from about a month ago. He did not open a traditional frontend but allowed a locally running AI agent to write scripts to update his ENS records, completing the task in about 5 minutes. ENS is a system that maps human-readable names to Ethereum addresses. The conventional path involves opening a dedicated application, connecting a wallet, and signing. This time, these steps were replaced by a single command.
He described the capabilities as two-sided. AI has already escaped the sandbox, found software vulnerabilities, assisted in formal verification, and can perform complex cryptography on protocols like Ethereum. The gap lies between the input and the chain: users express their desires in natural language, and the agent translates it into transactions, calls, or cross-chain calls. He anticipates that executing complex on-chain operations directly without traditional interfaces will gradually become the norm.
He shifted the risk from the web frontend to the agent. He cited an attack related to Safe that resulted in a loss of about $1.4 billion, pointing out that it targeted the interaction layer between users and on-chain systems, not the on-chain contracts themselves. Agents handling transactions directly can reduce reliance on web interfaces but also introduce new issues: whether the agent itself is secure, if it can prevent prompt injection, and whether it correctly understands on-chain operations. Higher security has become both feasible and necessary, as models will continuously discover exploitable vulnerabilities.
The public remarks also mentioned the next two years. Ethereum transaction costs are expected to continue to decline, privacy capabilities will improve, and the integration of AI with on-chain applications will accelerate. Interactions will increasingly be handled by robots, reducing the presence of traditional applications. He did not provide a price target for Ethereum during this speech. OKX announced OKX Money at the same event, which allows for the storage, transfer, and spending of stablecoins, with eligible balances earning up to about 10% annualized, targeting emerging markets. Nearly 1,000 people attended the event.
This is not a token issuance. The speaker is a co-founder of the protocol, and the execution example is a local agent modifying ENS. The event was driven by continuous incidents at the interaction layer, leading to a redefinition of the interface. Beneficiaries include tools for local agents, intent parsing, and transaction simulation. Those under pressure include wallets and applications that rely on web frontends for interactions, as well as users who delegate signing authority to agents. The contract layer was not described as ineffective; rather, it is the layer where humans click buttons that has become ineffective.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Vitalik's interface theory connects to his own account abstraction and intent transactions. ERC-4337 separates signing and payment from a single webpage, allowing users to submit goals, with solvers finding paths. The difference on October 6 was that the solver was replaced by a local agent: 5 minutes to modify ENS without a dedicated frontend. OKX summarized this with robots for robots, indicating that the exchange is already using the same narrative for product storytelling.
No new protocol upgrades were announced at this event. What was activated is the interaction entry point. Local agents writing scripts means that keys and instructions can remain on the user's machine instead of being stored on a replaceable website. The motivation is that the $1.4 billion attack targeted the interaction layer. Removing the web reduces the surface area vulnerable to hosted frontend hijacking. Prompt injection and misunderstanding shift this surface to the model.
A comparison can be made to Apple using Siri to consolidate app functions into intents, and Cursor allowing agents to modify local code directly. The difference is that on-chain operations are irreversible once signed. The industry is in the early stages of interface replacement. Applications will not disappear; rather, what will fade is the need for users to recognize every button. The next two years are summarized as decreasing costs, enhanced privacy, and more interactions handled by robots.
Structurally, this is a technological substitution. Scarcity shifts from interface design to who can accurately translate natural language into calls. The mechanism is that the frontend was once a security boundary and a revenue and traffic entry point. After agents bypass it, wallets, app stores, and phishing sites lose their default positions. The new boundary is the agent's permissions, simulation, and confirmation. What he describes as the norm is that people no longer open applications. What remains unmentioned is that the approval authority still needs to be upheld by someone.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Once the interface disappears, the risk merely shifts layers.
Records that can be modified in five minutes do not imply that understanding has been achieved.
Buttons replaced by agents still leave the responsibility for signing with humans.