Vitalik pushes for zk anonymous voting amidst social threats

Vitalik Buterin is advocating for the use of zk anonymous voting mechanisms to protect lawmaker identities in governance rulings, citing its ability to protect voters from threats of violence.

In a Farcaster post, the Ethereum co-founder spotlighted a recent incident involving South Carolina Circuit Court judge Diane Goodstein’s house which was burned down after weeks of receiving death threats. Goodstein had reportedly blocked the Trump administration from gaining access to voter files.

The decision was openly criticized by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and later reversed by the state Supreme Court.

Reflecting on the incident, Vitalik Buterin emphasized the importance of making major decision votes anonymous in order to protect public officials from the inevitable backlash that could arise from the opposing side.

In the past, Buterin has also advocated for secret-ballot general assembly votes in the United Nations. He believes that the mechanism would allow countries to choose their own representative and let them make decisions based on their own conscience without external pressure.

He argued that more governance decisions should be made through anonymous voting mechanisms. He has also emphasized the potential of zero-knowledge reputation systems, identity verification, and credential management in improving privacy and security with regards to how personal information is managed.

“This situation is a good argument for judges’ identities being hidden (!!) when they make their rulings. The function of a judge is to rule according to the facts as interpreted through their conscience, not to be “accountable” to violent mobs,” said Buterin in his recent post.

Vitalik: ‘zk wizard tech solutions for social problems’

In a separate post, Vitalik Buterin underlined zero-knowledge technology’s role in ensuring voter anonymity through the blockchain. He observed that acts of violence perpetuated by and against state actors has been on the rise recently, therefore such measures should be considered.

“Today this stuff sounds crazy and “why is the crypto bro pushing zk wizard tech solutions to a social problem”, but in the 2020s age of easy physical retaliation (including by foreign adversary states), I think we’ll see such ideas enter the overton window more,” said Vitalik Buterin.

Zero-knowledge proofs are the core foundation of zk-based voting systems. They allow voters to prove that they can satisfy certain conditions without revealing the voter’s identity or how they voted. The voting system can verify eligibility via cryptographic statements without leaking personal information.

For instance, projects such as “Distributed Anonymous e-Voting” use zk-SNARKs and Merkle trees to ensure that voter identity in a way that the voter can later use to prove membership in the set of eligible voters without revealing their identity.

Back in April 2025, a New York assemblyman filed a bill pushing for the use of blockchain technology to protect voters’ data during U.S. elections. Such a concept has also been used in the past by countries like Georgia, which saw its opposition party launching an identity app powered by Rarimo’s Freedom Tool.

The app was meant to protect voters’ identity during national elections to address concerns of privacy violation and prevent voter manipulation. The system would bar outside parties, including the government, from tracking on-app user activities.