Vitalik Signals "ZK Payments" as Next Standard for the Agent Era Vitalik Buterin @VitalikButerin stated that at the protocol level for native agent standards, the next step for payments is likely ZK Payments. He believes that in AI scenarios, persistent pseudonymous identities will eventually lose all privacy. The team is developing a ZK API to isolate each request, which protects privacy without requiring an on-chain transaction for every single action, and can be combined with security deposits to prevent abuse.