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Vitalik Buterin Criticizes Geolocation Feature in X

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Vitalik Buterin Criticizes Geolocation Feature in X

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has labeled the new feature of social network X, which reveals a user’s country, as “risky.”

The platform’s product director, Nikita Bier, announced the release of the feature on November 22, presenting it as a way to “ensure platform integrity.” 

According to Buterin, in the short term, the innovation will “bring many positive effects.” However, in the medium term, users will find ways to bypass checks using: 

“Creating a million fake accounts with false locations will remain a challenging task, but creating one such account and boosting it to a million followers will become a relatively simple procedure,” the programmer noted.

Six months after implementation, “troll farms” will emerge, effectively based in random European countries but labeled as being in the US or UK. 

Managing partner of Cinneamhain Ventures, Adam Cochran, noted that “sophisticated actors” have long been using the methods described by Buterin.

“For over a decade, Russian groups have used American residential proxies (which are not detected by proxy systems), American prepaid SIM cards, and even US-purchased Android devices and credit cards to manage accounts,” he wrote.

The Ethereum co-founder also called the feature a privacy threat. 

“In most cases, revealing the country still leaves a wide field of anonymity for the user, but there are categories of people for whom even minimal information leakage is risky. Such users should not face sudden and irreversible privacy violations,” he stated.

Community Opinions 

The founder of Uniswap, Hayden Adams, also opposed the innovation. 

“Voluntary disclosure of personal data is fine, mandatory is not,” he emphasized.

Technical director of the decentralized platform Summer.fi, Andrey David, also noted privacy issues: 

“The problem is not in showing the country, but in forced visibility without warning. Privacy features should always start with the least revealing settings.”

Cyfrin co-founder Patrick Collins stressed that “privacy is normal.” 

Some users pointed out the risks for participants in the cryptocurrency industry, who often face incidents. In January, unknown individuals kidnapped Ledger co-founder David Balland in France and demanded a ransom of €10 million ($10.4 million).

Last year, a foreigner was killed in Kyiv over digital assets. 

“Many of us maintain pseudonymity for safety reasons—not because we have something to hide, but because the crypto sphere attracts criminals. Such changes gradually erode privacy and put real people at risk,” wrote scam investigator known as Crypto Rug Muncher.

The new feature cannot be completely disabled. Users are advised to select “Show region/continent” in settings instead of a specific country. 

In April, Buterin called privacy the foundation of freedom. In November, he introduced a tool to enhance privacy in the ecosystem of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

Earlier, the Ethereum co-founder criticized the proposed EU “Chat Control” bill, stating that it threatens citizens’ rights to privacy in digital communications.

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