Vitalik Buterin Connects DeepSeek V4 to Ethereum Privacy Future

On 28 May 2026 Vitalik Buterin tied DeepSeek V4’s locally runnable 2-bit model to Ethereum’s privacy roadmap, stressing reduced dependence on centralized RPC providers. The latest commentary builds on his March CROPS AI presentation by highlighting ZK infrastructure that could enable paid private LLM calls and shielded RPC reads. DeepSeek V4’s quantized version fits in roughly 90 GB VRAM, delivering 35 tokens per second on Apple hardware versus 7 tokens per second on AMD, while urging Ethereum-specific fine-tuning and AMD Flash optimizations to strengthen protocol security and developer tooling.