Svmuu News: Vitalik Buterin published an article titled “Obfuscation: Building the Final Boss of Cryptography (Part I),” which systematically outlines the technology tree behind the main branch of the obfuscation protocol iO. The article notes that obfuscation technology can transform a program into a “cryptographic program,” allowing computations on plaintext inputs while hiding the internal logic. In theory, this enables a “trustless trusted third party,” and when combined with blockchain, it can be used to build a variety of applications, such as nearly trustless voting systems and auction protocols. While the current iO scheme is technically polynomial in runtime, the actual computational overhead is enormous, with an estimated runtime exceeding the lifespan of the universe.