Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin proposes AI 'stewards' to help reinvent DAO governance
Vitalik Buterin proposed using personal AI agents, secured by ZKPs and TEEs, to automate and improve decentralized autonomous organization governance.Summary
Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin suggested a significant technical overhaul for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) by introducing personal Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, termed 'stewards,' to handle voting on users' behalf. This proposal aims to combat low participation and power centralization by allowing individuals to deploy LLMs trained on their values to vote on complex DAO decisions, addressing the problem that most users lack the time or expertise for every vote.
Buterin outlined key technical requirements for these AI agents. First, privacy of content would be ensured by operating within secure environments like multi-party computation (MPC) or trusted execution environments (TEEs) to process sensitive data confidentially. Second, voter anonymity would be guaranteed using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to verify eligibility without revealing wallet addresses or voting choices, thereby guarding against coercion and bribery.
Furthermore, to manage the influx of proposals, especially those potentially generated by generative AI, Buterin suggested prediction markets where agents could bet on proposal success, incentivizing quality contributions. These AI stewards would automate routine governance, flagging only critical issues for direct human review, ultimately aiming to scale digital governance effectively.
(Source：CoinDesk)