The Ethereum Foundation has taken a significant step toward strengthening privacy on its network. Its Privacy & Scaling Explorations team, previously focused on experimental cryptography, has rebranded itself as Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE). The shift reflects a broader mission to address concrete challenges rather than speculative research.
The new roadmap, released on September 12 by Sam Richards, a member of the foundation’s privacy division, outlines Ethereum’s long-term strategy. Richards explained that Ethereum cannot fulfill its role as a global settlement layer without strong privacy protections. Without them, the network risks turning into a platform for surveillance, undermining its purpose of enabling digital freedom.
Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, along with community groups like the Silviculture Society and the foundation’s executive team, provided input into the new framework. Their contributions helped define three main areas of development: private writes, private reads, and private proving. These priorities will guide the foundation’s work for years to come.
The PSE team is dedicated to making privacy in Ethereum the rule and not the exception. The team has made it clear that privacy solutions should be realistic, inexpensive, and in line with worldwide compliance regulations.
Private writes are designed such that private on-chain activity, such as voting for governance decisions and use of distributed applications and transactions, is as simple as public activity. This includes next-gen technologies such as stealth addresses and fully homomorphic encryption, and support from the partner communities such as Kohaku and Intmax.
Private reads aim at the possibility of querying applications in the Ethereum system without the revelation of user intent or identity. Existing work includes a working group for privacy-preserving Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) and Oblivious RAM (ORAM) research for solutions. These would secure user activity from network-level monitoring.
Private proving is all about enabling fast, private verification of information. The track includes research in zkTLS protocols like TLSNotary for secure and verifiable data portability and research in the area of modular zero-knowledge wallets and scalable identity systems.
The strategy outlines a cultural shift in the foundation. Instead of funding self-contained projects, PSE would fund tackling defined challenges. The problem-centric method was cited by Richards as aiding in making the outcomes measurable and aligning them with long-term foundation goals.
The next six months will focus on projects like the Institutional Privacy Task Force’s private DeFi, new private voting protocols in conjunction with organizations like Aragon, and current work on programmable privacy protocols.
The privacy roadmap of Ethereum is not just a technical one but a communal one as well. The foundation has urged developers, researchers, and the general public to contribute in the form of working groups, forums, and public events.
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