Vitalik Moves to Local Mixing as Obfuscation Series Reaches Third Stage
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published the third part of his series on cryptographic obfuscation, focusing on a method called "local mixing." This method abandons lattices and elliptic curves in favor of ideas borrowed from hash function design. Buterin described local mixing as a "completely different way of cryptography," free from elliptic curves, prime factorization, and lattices, making it more akin to symmetric cryptography used in everyday encryption.
The process begins with a circuit of logic gates like XOR, AND, and NOT. It undergoes a pipeline that ensures a correct output while obscuring any trace of the internal logic. Key steps include adding reversibility, strengthening, mechanization, mixing, and finally obfuscation. The mixing step scatters extra logic gates and shuffles their arrangement. Reversibility is foundational, allowing gates to be rewritten as other reversible gates with similar behavior.
Buterin acknowledged local mixing is a "wild and risky undertaking," lying on the "graveyard of failed attempts at white-box cryptography." However, its proponents argue it needs more research effort and a willingness to accept higher overhead costs. Buterin suggested AI could accelerate its development. He called obfuscation the "final boss of cryptography," with the most complex constructions having runtimes exceeding the universe's age.
The article concludes by explaining obfuscation's utility: it can encrypt a program so it still functions with normal inputs and outputs while hiding the code. Combined with blockchain, this moves toward a "trusted third party that requires no trust," enabling applications like private, collusion-resistant voting without relying on a trusted committee.
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