Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a post on X that he has combined zkAPI, Tor, extra cover traffic and local LLM prompt rewriting into an OpenAI-compatible daemon, then wrapped his AI agent tool pi with what he called a "paranoid mode." The code has already been open-sourced on GitHub.
According to Buterin, the setup gives each conversation its own Tor circuit and sends requests alongside random cover traffic. zkAPI is used to reduce identity leakage through the payment layer, while all prompts are first rewritten by a local model chosen by the user. Buterin said he personally uses qwen3.8-flash-next. On the outside of the agent stack, the tool is wrapped first with a bwrap sandbox and then with torsocks so that all network activity is routed through Tor.
Buterin also said the system is already fairly usable, though latency rises noticeably, especially when starting a new conversation. He added that Tor is far from the best privacy option for this use case: cover traffic can help against passive surveillance, but protections weaken significantly if an LLM provider colludes with a Tor entry node and actively manipulates timing.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a post on X that he has combined zkAPI, Tor, extra cover traffic and local LLM prompt rewriting into an OpenAI-compatible daemon, and built a "paranoid mode" wrapper for his AI agent tool pi. The related code has been open-sourced on GitHub.
How the setup works
Buterin said each conversation uses a separate Tor circuit, with requests sent together with random cover traffic. He said zkAPI is used to prevent identity leakage through the payment layer, and that all prompts are first rewritten by a local model selected by the user. He added that he personally uses qwen3.8-flash-next.
On top of that, the agent tool is wrapped first in a bwrap sandbox and then in torsocks, so that all network operations go through Tor.
Usable, but slower
Buterin said the setup is already fairly usable, but comes with noticeably higher latency, especially when a new conversation is started.
Limits of Tor in this use case
He also said Tor is far from the best privacy solution for this scenario. Cover traffic can defend against passive surveillance, but the protection is substantially weaker if an LLM service provider colludes with a Tor entry node and actively manipulates timing.
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