Ethereum Foundation releases privacy roadmap with PSE

The Ethereum Foundation published a roadmap for implementing on-chain privacy features, a layer-1 (L1) smart contract blockchain, throughout the Ethereum ￰0￱ restructured “Privacy & Scaling Explorations” as the “Privacy Stewards of Ethereum” (PSE). In Friday’s announcement, PSE said it hopes to add privacy solutions across the protocol, infrastructure, networking, application, and wallet layers and outlined several goals for the next 3-6 ￰1￱ included private transfers with the development of the PlasmaFold layer-2 network, confidential voting, and privacy for decentralized finance (DeFi) ￰2￱ roadmap further suggested developing safeguards to protect personal data from exposure through remote procedure call (RPC) services and private identity solutions using zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs—verifying information without disclosing its specific ￰3￱ defined its mission: “Ethereum deserves to become core infrastructure for global digital commerce, identity, collaboration, and the internet of ￰4￱ this potential is impossible without private data, transactions, and ￰5￱ take responsibility within the Ethereum Foundation for ensuring privacy goals at the application layer are reached.” The announcement noted they would work with protocol teams to ensure that any L1 changes were needed to support strong, censorship-resistant, intermediary-free ￰6￱ pushes private transfers, confidential voting, and DeFi safeguards Privacy has always been at the core of the cypherpunk ethos that spawned ￰7￱ crypto gains widespread adoption and the attention of governments, the crypto community is increasingly concerned about evolving digital financial surveillance ￰8￱ are weighing new regulations for the crypto industry and markets, including potential surveillance measures to monitor participant ￰9￱ Department of the Treasury, led by Secretary Scott Bessent, is considering proposals to require government identity checks in smart contracts, an idea that has sparked pushback from the crypto ￰10￱ co-founder Vitalik Buterin has long argued that privacy is a fundamental human ￰11￱ April, he cautioned that transparency functions more as a flaw than a feature in the digital age, stressing that privacy is essential to safeguard individuals amid the rise of state power and centralized ￰12￱ and intent-based architecture set as near-term priorities Recently, Ethereum Foundation researchers noted that interoperability is the top near-term priority for Ethereum ￰13￱ a blog post, the researchers wrote, “We see interoperability, and related projects presented in this note, as the highest leverage opportunity” within the user experience domain in the next six to 12 ￰14￱ near-term strategy focuses on intent-based architecture and general message-passing.

Essentially, the focus is on approving users to express outcomes (or “intents”). At the same time, the network takes care of the low-level transactions and upgrades the crosschain “pipes” (message-passing infrastructure) so that those intents execute without delay across layer-1 and ￰15￱ Ethereum Foundation notes it will focus on optimizing for specific metrics, including time-to-inclusion, confirmation/finality, layer-2 settlement, and signatures per ￰16￱ researchers indicated that interoperability is key since the Ethereum ecosystem is segmented into many layer-2 protocols that advance its functionality and scalability, while bringing “their own challenges, chief among them the pressures of fragmentation.” The post cites a significant pain point: “At its simplified core, the key ingredients to accelerate interop boil down to unlocking fast crosschain message-passing and standardisation.

Currently, message-passing is partially bottlenecked by slow settlement times. Don’t just read crypto ￰17￱ ￰18￱ to our newsletter. It's free .