Ethereum Foundation Forms 47-Member Privacy Cluster to Make Privacy ‘First-Class Property’

The Ethereum Foundation announced Wednesday the formation of a 47-member Privacy Cluster coordinated by Blockscout founder Igor ￰3￱ initiative expands on efforts dating back to 2018 through the Privacy and Scaling Explorations team which has built over 50 open-source research projects and released key primitives including Semaphore for anonymous signaling

MACI for private voting and ￰4￱ Ethereum Foundation is committed to working alongside the ecosystem to make privacy a ￰5￱ is ￰6￱ is for everyone. ￰0￱ — Ethereum Foundation (@ethereumfndn) October 8 2025 Five-Track Strategy Targets Surveillance Vulnerabilities The cluster unites top researchers engineers

and cryptographers to tackle five key ￰7￱ areas include private reads and writes for seamless payments and interactions without surveillance private proving for portable verification private identities through selective disclosure privacy experience improvements

and institutional adoption through a dedicated task ￰8￱ foundation is also developing Kohaku a privacy-preserving wallet and open-source SDK designed to make strong cryptography accessible for mainstream ￰9￱ move follows a September rebrand of the Privacy and Scaling Explorations team to Privacy Stewards for Ethereum which shifted focus from cryptography exploration to problem-first solutions addressing surveillance ￰10￱ transformation introduced a roadmap warning that without robust privacy protections Ethereum risks becoming “ the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom .” The team emphasized that institutions and users would migrate elsewhere if private transactions

identity and data remain compromised by public blockchain ￰11￱ Foundation's @PrivacyEthereum rebrands as PSE with a roadmap making privacy the default across the technical stack to prevent surveillance risks. #Ethereum #Privacy ￰1￱ — ￰12￱ (@cryptonews) September 14 2025 Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin laid the philosophical groundwork for this expansion in April when he published “ Why I Support Privacy ,” urging the Web3 community to treat privacy as essential to decentralization amid growing concerns over AI-driven surveillance and data ￰13￱ argued that information is power and when centralized

it risks distorting democratic ￰14￱ days before then he released an accompanying roadmap on April 11 outlining four areas for enhancing privacy including anonymous payments application-level privacy

secure data access and network ￰15￱ Philosophy to Protocol Implementation Buterin’s roadmap called for Ethereum wallets to integrate tools like Railgun and Privacy Pools to create “ shielded balances ” enabling private-by-default ￰16￱ advocated generating unique addresses per dApp to eliminate traceable links between applications while supporting standards like FOCIL and EIP-7701 to reduce reliance on public transaction ￰17￱ proposal offered a structured path requiring minimal changes to Ethereum’s Layer-1 consensus promising near-term benefits without overhauling the network’s ￰18￱ urgency also stems from warnings by industry veterans like Petro Golovko of British Gold Trust

who argued in an August interview with Cryptonews that public blockchains expose salaries business deals and balance sheets making crypto “ unusable for regular people and impossible for institutions .” Golovko compared current blockchain transparency to the pre-SSL internet when users refused to enter credit card numbers due to a lack of encryption

maintaining that crypto remains stuck in this vulnerable ￰19￱ regulatory pressure adds another layer of ￰20￱ June Ethereum community member Eugenio Reggianini outlined GDPR compliance practices requiring personal data to remain off-chain with blockchain nodes relaying only encrypted references or proofs rather than identifiable ￰21￱ proposal called for assigning data controller status to front-end actors like wallets and dApps while lower-layer infrastructure processes only anonymized ￰22￱ the Infrastructure for Mass Adoption The Institutional Privacy Task Force launched in collaboration with the EF EcoDev Enterprise team

specifically targets adoption blockers by translating regulatory and operational requirements into privacy specifications and proof-of-concepts across real-world assets funds payments trading

and ￰23￱ addresses concerns that no board will approve systems exposing supply chains or financial operations globally limiting crypto to speculation rather than serious ￰24￱ are already implementing advanced ￰25￱ a multi-chain decentralized exchange uses zero-knowledge proofs to separate order intent from execution

keeping trade details confidential while ensuring settlement ￰26￱ DEXs hit $1 trillion monthly volume for the first time as Aster and Hyperliquid lead a surge challenging centralized exchange dominance. #Perps #Dexs ￰2￱ — ￰27￱ (@cryptonews) October 2 2025 The platform employs a multi-node order book to prevent front-running and MEV attacks enabling fast self-custodial trading with privacy at the ￰28￱ foundation’s commitment extends across the full stack from cutting-edge cryptography and institutional pilots to everyday user experience aiming to complement the hundreds of privacy projects already operating across the crypto ￰29￱ continues as a team focused on early research and development under Andy’s leadership

while new privacy-related projects form under the expanded cluster ￰30￱ foundation emphasized that privacy deserves to be a “ first-class property ” of the Ethereum ecosystem for individuals and institutions alike.