Vitalik proposes to use ZK payment as the next standard for encrypted payments According to TechFlow, on May 11th, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, stated in a research article released on May 10th, 2026 that in order to promote the large-scale adoption of encrypted payments, the industry needs to shift from "pseudo anonymity" to "default privacy" and propose replacing standard transfers with zero knowledge proof (ZK) based transactions. It is claimed that with the help of recursive SNARK and "ZK API using points", Ethereum's two-layer network can achieve privacy payments at speeds and costs close to public transactions, and support selective disclosure and compliance proof, while protecting balance and transaction history privacy and meeting the needs of anti money laundering supervision.