Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivered a speech in Shanghai, tracing the evolution of cryptographic technologies over the past 50 years. He highlighted the development from signature and encryption algorithms to the widespread adoption of HTTPS, emphasizing that reduced technological costs have been crucial for large-scale applications. Buterin focused on the breakthroughs of zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) in scalability, security, and privacy. He predicted that as performance improves and costs decrease, ZK will become a default component of blockchain systems. Additionally, he stressed the importance of ZK's privacy features, equating their significance to that of secure hardware, and introduced the notion "if it's not your silicon, it's not your private key."