Vitalik Shows Off AI Agent "Privacy Mode": Integrating Tor, zkAPI and Local LLM

PANews reported on October 16 that Vitalik Buterin posted on X that he added a "paranoid mode" wrapper to his AI agent tool, integrating zkAPI, Tor, random cover traffic and local LLM prompt rewriting. Each conversation uses an independent Tor circuit, zkAPI is used to hide payment identity, and a local model handles prompt rewriting; the Agent runtime environment also forces network access through Tor via a bwrap sandbox and torsocks.

Vitalik said the solution is already usable, but the latency caused by creating new conversations and Tor is still relatively high; when facing active attacks coordinated between model service providers and Tor entry nodes, the existing cover traffic protection is still limited, and a dedicated mixnet may be needed in the future. He also said that lower-cost zkAPI top-ups and withdrawal gas fees will soon go live on mainnet.