The Ethereum Foundation’s Commitment to Privacy

Privacy is the state to take what you share, erstwhile you stock it, and who you stock it with. We each instrumentality this for granted successful regular life: closing the doorway to a room, casting a concealed ballot, oregon speaking privately with a friend. But online and onchain, these protections are often missing.

Ethereum was created to beryllium the instauration of integer trust, 1 that is worthy of civilizational scale. For that spot to stay credible, privateness indispensable beryllium portion of its core, the EF, on with dozens of Ethereum teams focused connected privacy, are arrogant to enactment this cause..

Who does privateness substance for?

Quick answer: everyone.

• For people: online privateness protects dignity and bureau successful integer life. It gives radical the quality to take what to share, with whom, and when.

• For developers: privateness expands the builder plan space, it tin alteration safer apps and wholly caller merchandise categories portion reducing liability for builders (e.g., information custody).

• For institutions: privateness is indispensable for however businesses run and marque decisions. It lets them take who to enactment with, however to compensate teams, and however to operation interior processes each portion gathering information and compliance standards required to follow nationalist blockchains.

• For society: privateness safeguards antiauthoritarian processes and corporate trust, it keeps unfastened systems credible by protecting the state to think, communicate, and transact without surveillance oregon coercion.

Today, Ethereum is trusted to unafraid billions successful assets and millions of regular transactions. Privacy is indispensable to guarantee that this infrastructure remains usable, credible, and aligned with quality freedom.

Our commitment

The Ethereum Foundation’s committedness to privateness rests connected a elemental principle: credible neutrality, security, and openness are overmuch much invaluable to humanity erstwhile paired with privacy.

The Foundation has already supported privateness probe and improvement since 2018 done the PSE team, which has already:

• Built implicit 50+ open-source R&D projects experimenting with privateness tools.
• Released halfway primitives similar Semaphore (anonymous signaling), MACI (private voting), zkEmail, TLSNotary (pioneered zkTLS) and Anon Aadhaar (private nationalist ID) among others.
• Created repositories that person been forked thousands of times, forming the backbone of privateness R&D crossed the ecosystem.

Now we are taking it 1 measurement further.

The EF is expanding our privateness efforts. PSE volition proceed arsenic a squad focused connected aboriginal R&D, led by Andy. At the aforesaid time, we are gathering caller privacy-related projects. All of this forms the caller Privacy cluster astatine the EF, which is coordinated by Igor Barinov.

The privateness clump is composed of 47 of the apical researchers, engineers, coordinators and cryptographers successful the blockchain industry.

The Privacy clump is not conscionable 1 project, but includes cardinal initiatives from PSE and different EF projects specified as:

• Private Reads & Writes (PSE): making actions similar backstage payments, votes, and interactions arsenic seamless and inexpensive arsenic imaginable to alteration users and enterprises to browse, query, and authenticate without surveillance oregon metadata leaks/data breaches.

• Private Proving (PSE): making proofs portable and businesslike truthful radical tin verify eligibility, identity, oregon assets without disclosing unnecessary information.

• Private Identities (PSE): selective disclosure and zkID projects that support your individuality online.

• Privacy Experience (PSE): improving privateness protocol UX and making privateness consciousness mean and accessible.

• Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF): A multidisciplinary task unit bridging institutions and Ethereum by translating regulatory and operational requirements into privateness specifications, by helping institutions lick existent usage cases.

• Kohaku: a caller privacy-preserving wallet/open-source SDK, built to marque beardown cryptography accessible for all.

Privacy deserves to beryllium a first-class spot of the Ethereum ecosystem, and we are committed to moving alongside the ecosystem to marque that a world for individuals and institutions alike.

How the Work Fits Together

The Ethereum Foundation’s privateness efforts span the afloat stack from cutting-edge cryptography and organization pilots to mundane idiosyncratic experience:

• Research frontier: PSE pioneers applied cryptography, including zero-knowledge proofs, with contributions from dozens of starring researchers and engineers.

• Protocol layer: These breakthroughs pass however scalability and confidentiality tin beryllium embedded into Ethereum itself.

• Application layer: Tools similar Semaphore, MACI, and stealth addresses show however privateness tin amended payments, governance, and identity.

• Institutional layer: The Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF) ensures this exertion besides meets the existent operational and regulatory requirements successful respective concern areas (RWA, Funds & Assets, Payments, Trading, Oracles & Compliance).

• User experience: Kohaku Wallet explores however beardown cryptography tin consciousness normal, truthful that privateness is not conscionable available, but accessible.

And we're not alone. The enactment being done by countless teams, leaders, and privateness advocates propulsion america each further, and the EF is present to bash its part. Our enactment seeks to complement the hundreds of privateness projects and initiatives that already beryllium successful the crypto ecosystem. See 700+ of them here.

Looking forward

Improving privateness connected Ethereum is simply a large work for our ecosystem. By continuing to level up the privateness features of Ethereum astatine each level of the stack, we tin support users onchain and unlock caller usage cases for developers and institutions. The enactment is underway. The gathering blocks beryllium today. And the Ethereum ecosystem volition proceed to refine, scale, and deploy them: for individuals, for institutions, and for the integer commons.

Privacy is normal.

Interested successful moving with us?
Get successful interaction astatine [email protected]