Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a comprehensive roadmap to enhance user privacy on the blockchain.
The plan envisions creating a world where private transactions are the default, and users can interact across applications without publicly linking their activities.
Vitalik Buterin Unveils Privacy-Focused Ethereum Roadmap
Buterin shared the roadmap on April 11 on the Ethereum Magicians forum. It outlined practical, incremental improvements to make private transactions and anonymous on-chain interactions more accessible for everyday users without requiring major changes to Ethereum’s core consensus protocol.
“This roadmap can be combined with a longer-term roadmap that makes deeper changes to L1, or privacy-preserving application-specific rollups, or other more complex features,” Buterin stated.
The roadmap addresses four key privacy forms by implementing various short-term and long-term solutions. These are focused on improving on-chain payment privacy, partial anonymization of in-app activity, privacy of on-chain reads, and network-level anonymity.
Firstly, he advocated for integrating privacy tools into wallets. This would enable features like default “shielded balances,” allowing users to keep transactions private. The idea is to enhance privacy without requiring users to switch to a separate privacy-focused wallet.
Next, Buterin suggested a “one address per application” standard to limit traceability.
“This is a major step, and it entails significant convenience sacrifices, but IMO, this is a bullet that we should bite because this is the most practical way to remove public links between all of your activity across different applications,” he said.
Additionally, Buterin proposed making “send-to-self” transactions privacy-preserving by default. According to him, this is necessary for the address-per-application design to function effectively.
He also focused on using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in the short term for RPC privacy. Buterin added that Private Information Retrieval (PIR) could be used in the future.
“If we also add security armoring to RPC nodes (ie. light client support), it becomes practical for a user to trust a much larger set of RPC servers. This reduces metadata leakage,” Buterin remarked.
The roadmap outlined deeper changes for the long term, such as EIP-7701 (account abstraction) and FOCIL (Fork-Choice enforced Inclusion Lists) implementation. This would allow privacy protocols to operate without centralized relays, making them more resilient to censorship. That’s not all. It would also contribute to increased privacy.
Buterin’s roadmap has generated substantial traction from the community, with many expressing optimism. The Ethereum ecosystem has long been calling for improvements in user privacy, and this new plan seems to resonate with those concerns.
“Vitalik’s finally giving privacy the attention it deserves, this roadmap looks like a solid step toward making Ethereum more user-friendly without messing with consensus,” an analyst posted.
Nonetheless, not all feedback was unequivocally positive. Some in the community remain cautious about the potential challenges involved in implementing such ambitious changes.
“Vitalik’s roadmap is solid but execution risk is high. Adopting zk tech is key if they want real privacy without bloating L1,” another analyst cautioned.
The proposal comes as the Ethereum ecosystem prepares for the Pectra upgrade. While Pectra focuses on performance and usability, Buterin’s privacy roadmap complements these efforts by addressing a critical user need. If executed, these changes could position Ethereum as a more privacy-conscious blockchain, potentially driving greater adoption as the network evolves.
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