The Ethereum Foundation has released a roadmap to bring end-to-end privacy features to the Ethereum network, a layer-1 (L1) smart contract blockchain, and rebranded its “Privacy & Scaling Explorations” initiative to “Privacy Stewards of Ethereum” (PSE).
PSE said it aims to bring privacy solutions to the protocol, infrastructure, networking, application, and wallet layers in Friday’s announcement, and laid out several key goals for the next 3-6 months.
These included enabling private transfers through the development of the PlasmaFold layer-2 network, confidential voting, and privacy in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
The roadmap also proposed exploring a workaround for personal data being broadcast through remote procedure call (RPC) services, and private identity solutions through zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, a way of verifying information without revealing the specific contents of that information. PSE outlined its mission:
“Ethereum deserves to become core infrastructure for global digital commerce, identity, collaboration, and the internet of value. But this potential is impossible without private data, transactions, and identity. We take responsibility within the Ethereum Foundation for ensuring privacy goals at the application layer are reached.
“We’ll work with protocol teams to ensure that any L1 changes needed to enable strong, censorship-resistant intermediary-free privacy take place,” the announcement continued.
Privacy has always been at the core of the cypherpunk ethos that spawned cryptocurrencies, and as crypto gains widespread adoption and the attention of governments, the crypto community is increasingly concerned about evolving digital financial surveillance methods.
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US government officials are currently weighing regulations for the crypto industry and markets, which include potential surveillance measures to track the activity of participants.
The US Department of the Treasury, headed by secretary Scott Bessent, is exploring proposals to add government identity checks to smart contracts, which has drawn backlash from the crypto community.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has repeatedly said that privacy is an essential human right. In April, Buterin warned that transparency is more of a bug, rather than a feature, in the digital age.
Buterin said that privacy was needed to protect individuals in a time of growing state power and large, centralized corporations.
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