Ethereum Foundation Unveils Ambitious Privacy Roadmap, Rebrands Team to PSE

The Ethereum Foundation has announced a significant push towards enhancing on-chain privacy with the rebranding of its "Privacy & Scaling Explorations" team to "Privacy Stewards of Ethereum" (PSE). This strategic shift signals a commitment to making privacy a default feature across Ethereum's technical stack, addressing growing concerns about digital surveillance and institutional adoption.

Key Takeaways

• The PSE team aims to make private on-chain actions ubiquitous, cheap, and compliant.

• The roadmap focuses on three core areas: private writes, private reads, and private proving.

• Initiatives include PlasmaFold for private transfers, confidential voting, and privacy-preserving RPC services.

• The move is seen as crucial for Ethereum's future as a global settlement layer and to protect users from increasing state and corporate power.

A New Era for Ethereum Privacy

The PSE team's roadmap is built around three fundamental pillars designed to integrate privacy seamlessly into the Ethereum ecosystem: private writes, private reads, and private proving. The overarching goal is to ensure that performing private actions on the blockchain is as cost-effective and straightforward as public ones.

Private writes aim to make on-chain actions private by default, with ongoing work on projects like PlasmaFold, an experimental Layer 2 design intended to support privacy transfer features. A proof of concept for this feature is anticipated by Devconnect, Ethereum's developer conference.

Private reads focus on enabling users to query the blockchain without revealing their identity or intentions. To achieve this, PSE is actively involved in evaluating solutions for privacy-preserving Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services, which typically can leak user information.

Private proving, also referred to as "prove anywhere," centers on making the generation and verification of zero-knowledge proofs faster, more private, and accessible on everyday devices.

Addressing Surveillance and Fostering Adoption

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has emphasized the critical role of privacy, stating that without strong privacy measures, Ethereum risks becoming "the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom." This sentiment underscores the urgency behind the PSE's mission, as a lack of privacy could deter both individual users and institutions.

Concerns about increasing government surveillance and regulatory pressures, such as proposals for identity checks in DeFi, further highlight the need for robust privacy solutions. Industry experts also warn that the inherent transparency of public ledgers can hinder mass adoption, making sensitive financial data vulnerable and potentially unusable for regular business operations.

The PSE's roadmap also includes efforts in confidential DeFi, aiming to design protocols that ensure privacy while maintaining compliance for institutional clients. Furthermore, the team is working on private computation projects and plans to release a "state of private voting 2025" report.

Balancing Privacy with Compliance

The initiative acknowledges the delicate balance between enhancing privacy and ensuring regulatory compliance. While features like zero-knowledge proofs can help businesses verify compliance without exposing sensitive data, navigating the evolving regulatory landscape remains a challenge, particularly for crypto-friendly businesses operating in different jurisdictions.

The immutable nature of blockchain records also presents challenges for privacy laws like GDPR, which require the ability to remove sensitive data. PSE's work on data portability and integrating privacy-enhancing technologies aims to address these complexities, paving the way for greater adoption of Ethereum for commerce and identity solutions.

Sources

• Ethereum Foundation sets end-to-end privacy roadmap, with private writes, reads and proving, The Block.

• Ethereum Foundation Reveals Privacy-Preserving Roadmap, Cointelegraph.

• Ethereum's Privacy Overhaul: Balancing Security and Compliance, OneSafe.

• Ethereum Foundation's Privacy Team Rebrands as PSE, Unveils End-to-End Onchain Privacy Roadmap, Cryptonews.

• How Ethereum Plans to Make Your Transactions Truly Invisible, Cointribune.