Vitalik's post details the entire technical tree behind the mainline of the confusion protocol (iO)
Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "Obfuscation: building the final boss of cryptography (Part I)", systematically outlining the entire technical tree behind the mainline of the obfuscation protocol (iO). The article points out that obfuscation technology can transform programs into "encrypted programs", allowing computations on plaintext inputs while hiding internal logic. Theoretically, it can achieve "trustless trusted third parties", and when combined with blockchain, it can build nearly trustless voting systems, auction protocols, and various other applications. However, the current iO scheme, while technically polynomial time, incurs enormous practical overhead, with expected runtimes exceeding the lifespan of the universe.The article details the construction process of lattice-based iO, covering the stacking of primitives such as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), attribute-based encryption (ABE), obfuscated circuits, function encryption, and XiO. Vitalik stated that the field has moved from "impossible" to "provably secure" over the past decade, but there remains a significant gap to practical application. He proposed three future paths: further optimizing the existing lattice-based route, adopting bolder cryptographic assumptions to simplify constructions, or exploring entirely new assumptions that are completely different from lattices, emphasizing that if any direction succeeds, it will largely "solve cryptography", enabling any protocol describable by an ideal trusted third party to be securely implemented.