Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin declared 2026 to be the “year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty,” starting with his own devices.
In a Friday post on X, he laid out the software changes he has made to reduce reliance on data-hungry, centralized platforms.
The “two major changes” to the software he used in 2025 were switching “almost fully” to Fileverse, an open-source, decentralized document platform — a kind of privacy-preserving Google Docs — and switching “decisively” to Signal as his primary messaging app.
Signal uses end-to-end encryption by default for all one-to-one and group chats, and stores minimal metadata, meaning only limited information, such as when an account was created or the last date it connected to the service.
Telegram, in contrast, only offers end-to-end encryption in optional “secret chats” and otherwise keeps messages and metadata on its own servers, a model that has drawn scrutiny as law enforcement data requests have increased in countries like France.
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Local AI and self-hosted tools
In 2026, Buterin has moved from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap via OrganicMaps and from Gmail to Proton Mail, while prioritizing decentralized social media.
Buterin also discussed his experiments with locally hosting large language models, arguing that sending all data to third-party services is “unnecessary” when users can increasingly run artificial intelligence tools on their own hardware.
He said better user interfaces, integrations and efficiency are still needed to make local models a seamless default, but added that there has already been “huge progress” compared with a year ago.
Privacy advocates see broader shift
His post echoes points made by privacy advocate and NBTV founder Naomi Brockwell, who described running models locally as the most private way to use AI without sending prompts or documents to external servers.
Brockwell has spent years teaching privacy-enhancing behavior to mainstream audiences, arguing that privacy is about autonomy rather than secrecy and encouraging the use of tools like Bitcoin (BTC), encrypted messengers and self-hosted services to reduce government and corporate surveillance power.
Related: Crypto’s next battle is privacy, but regulators face chicken-egg dilemma
Buterin’s post also comes amid renewed debate over how much access governments and platforms should have to users’ private communications and metadata.
The European Union’s controversial Chat Control proposal, for example, originally included pre‑encryption scanning of messages to detect abusive material, and prompted warnings from civil liberties groups and technologists that client‑side scanning could undermine trust in encrypted apps.
Progressively swapping out everyday apps for encrypted, open-source and local alternatives is, according to Buterin and other privacy advocates, one way for users to start reclaiming control over their data flows.
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