AI Successfully Unmasks Vitalik Buterin’s Anonymous Ethereum Contribution

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin confirmed that AI-assisted analysis correctly identified him as the author of an anonymous Ethereum proposal rewrite, ending a public challenge he issued two weeks earlier to test whether AI could break online anonymity. Co-Invest CEO Franklyn Wang’s analysis identified Buterin by examining how the document explained mathematical and technical concepts rather than by its wording.

Buterin Tried to Disguise His Writing

Buterin revealed he had written the anonymous rewrite of EIP-7503 in Chinese, translated it into English using an AI model, and manually adjusted the translation to hide his usual writing style. He said the AI picked up on his underlying reasoning patterns and technical explanation habits, which bypassed his attempt to disguise the prose entirely.

Wang’s Analysis Pointed to Buterin With High Confidence

Wang’s tool ranked Buterin as the most likely author of the anonymous December 2024 document with about 20% confidence, roughly ten times higher than the next candidate among 27 documents analyzed.

Broader Implications for Anonymous Contributors

The crypto industry has long relied on pseudonymous contributions, including Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. A February research paper from ETH Zurich and Anthropic argued that AI models can now identify pseudonymous authors by analyzing unstructured text, raising questions about whether anonymous technical work can remain untraceable going forward. A separate 2023 attempt to identify Nakamoto using a similar method did not produce a high-confidence match.