Vitalik Buterin calls for trustworthy hardware at Devcon 8

Ethereum's co-founder opened the first Devcon in India by arguing that trust in chips, operating systems and AI now has to be verifiable Vitalik Buterin opened Devcon 8 in Mumbai by calling for hardware people can actually verify, alongside stronger privacy protections across the technology stack. The Ethereum co-founder did not unveil a token or a product. He described a problem: modern technology asks users to trust too much and lets them check too little. Devcon 8 opened on November 3, 2026, at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai. It is the first time the annual Ethereum developer conference has been held in India. Six places where trust breaks down Buterin framed his keynote around trust, which he presented as the central challenge facing modern technology. He then split that challenge into six areas. The list covered verified operating systems, open silicon, self-sovereign health tech, free discourse, private communication and trustworthy AI. His proposed tools were formal verification, open-source designs and cryptographic proofs. The research summary of the keynote says these are areas the Ethereum Foundation intends to push forward, naming trustworthy AI and formally verified op...