Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a roadmap to enhance Layer-1 privacy on the blockchain network. The framework aims to improve user confidentiality without requiring significant changes to the network’s core infrastructure. The proposal targets four areas of privacy, including making on-chain payments private, partially obscuring user actions within decentralized applications, hiding read-access data from the blockchain, and anonymizing network-level communications. Buterin believes that implementing these upgrades could establish a new standard where private transactions become the default, offering privacy from observers and infrastructure-level threats.
Key components of Buterin’s proposal include integrating privacy tools directly into Ethereum wallets, allowing users to manage shielded balances without relying on third-party wallets. He also suggests using a separate address for each decentralized application to limit activity traceability across multiple platforms. Send-to-self transactions must preserve privacy by default, despite potential user experience trade-offs. Buterin believes that integrating these features into in-app wallets would standardize private interactions without major architectural shifts.
Technical improvements recommended by Buterin include using TEE-based RPC privacy as a short-term solution and transitioning to private information retrieval (PIR) when ready. Other recommendations include connecting each decentralized application to separate RPC nodes, advancing proof aggregation protocols, and supporting privacy-enhanced keystore wallets. Buterin believes that these improvements align well with existing efforts in cross-chain interoperability, where users interact with various chains through separate workflows.
The proposal outlined by Buterin aims to elevate Ethereum’s privacy standards and make private transactions the default option for users. By integrating privacy tools into Ethereum wallets and using separate addresses for each decentralized application, the framework is designed to enhance user confidentiality without major changes to the network’s infrastructure. Technical improvements, such as TEE-based RPC privacy and PIR, are suggested to further support privacy-enhanced interactions. Overall, Buterin’s roadmap offers a comprehensive strategy for improving Layer-1 privacy on the Ethereum blockchain.
