- Vitalik suggests using one wallet address per app to protect activity from being linked.
- The privacy plan includes tools to block tracking and help wallet actions stay hidden.
- Ethereum fell by over 1% in the past day, and its trading volume also dropped by 34%.
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, has introduced a privacy roadmap focused on user protection without modifying the Layer-1 consensus. The roadmap outlines privacy enhancements targeting payment confidentiality, decentralized app interactions, data read protection, and anonymous networking. Under this new roadmap, the upcoming upgrades will be kept to the Ethereum network’s current structure without disruption to the underlying protocols.
Stealth Transactions, App Isolation, and Anonymity by Default
Ethereum’s new roadmap proposes stealth payments and shielding mechanisms to protect user actions from being publicly linked across dApps. The road map suggests employing a “single address per application” strategy to deter tracking by wallets across dApps. While this might reduce usability, it undoubtedly increases the user’s isolation. Furthermore, wallets can integrate privacy tools like Railgun and Privacy Pools, allowing users to make private transactions by default.
Additionally, Buterin supports incorporating FOCIL and EIP-7701 standards to enable decentralized privacy infrastructure. They would function independently of centralized relays, providing censorship tolerance and verifiable privacy operations throughout the ecosystem. The goal is to make privacy the default experience across all Ethereum applications rather than just an optional feature.
Technical Proposals and Wallet-Level Defenses
Buterin proposed Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and Private Information Retrieval (PIR) as key building blocks for secure RPC data privacy. TEEs would provide short-term confidentiality solutions, while PIR would serve as the long-term goal for decentralized data access. In addition, he suggests connecting wallets to multiple RPC nodes, possibly using a mixnet, to minimize metadata exposure during transaction broadcast.
The roadmap also encourages proof aggregation protocols. These would allow multiple transactions from privacy-focused apps to be bundled into a single on-chain proof, reducing gas fees significantly. Another innovation includes privacy-preserving keystore wallets. These will enable account logic upgrades in one transaction without revealing user notes.
Towards a Privacy-First UX in Ethereum
The objective is to allow public visibility of actions within each app while making cross-activity connections invisible to external observers.
Hence, Ethereum aims to ensure most transactions are private by default and prevent both passive and active monitoring by adversarial RPC nodes. Buterin asserts that privacy should not be a feature for advanced users only but should be foundational to all Ethereum interactions.
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Ethereum Faces Market Pressure Despite Technical Progress
Despite the roadmap’s technical significance, Ethereum’s price continues to face pressure across markets according to CoinMarketCap. ETH fell from a daily high of $1,594 to its current $1,566.35, while its market cap slid 1.80% to $189.03 billion. Volume-to-market cap ratio sits at 11.16%, reflecting thin market activity. The supply remains fixed at 120.68 million ETH, with no max cap in place.
Despite registering a minor move upwards in the early day, the technical charts state that Ethereum is in a corrective mode. While the development of major projects is ongoing, it seems that short-term momentum is fading for now, as volumes are suggesting.
