The Ethereum team is expanding its efforts on privacy technologies, which are set to become a core feature of the blockchain ecosystem for all users.
The Ethereum Foundation announced the launch of Privacy Cluster, a team of 47 leading researchers and engineers who will develop solutions to protect the privacy of both individual and institutional users. The new initiative, coordinated by Igor Barinov, will bring together key projects from the Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE) team and other units.
The initiative highlights several key areas:
- Private Reads & Writes — technologies enabling private payments, voting, and other actions protected from data disclosure;
- Private Proving — efficient proofs that allow users to verify identity, access rights, or asset ownership without revealing unnecessary information;
- Private Identities — projects on selective data disclosure and zkID digital identifiers;
- Privacy Experience — improving usability and accessibility of privacy solutions so that confidentiality becomes a natural part of the user experience;
- Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF) — an interdisciplinary working group adapting regulatory and operational requirements for privacy and helping companies address practical challenges;
- Kohaku — a reference implementation and a wallet SDK for embedding cryptography into products, making privacy available for broad adoption.
Work on Kohaku has already begun in collaboration with Ambire, Wonderland, Railgun, Helios, Oblivious Labs, ZKnox, and other teams. The project is open source and available on GitHub. Its roadmap includes expanding privacy features into the DeFi sector and creating a dedicated Ethereum browser for deeper network integration.
The announcement emphasizes that privacy is not a privilege but a fundamental right for every user. The new projects aim to make confidential transactions and interactions on the network standard and accessible to all.
About three weeks ago, Ethereum presented a new roadmap describing the integration of privacy as an essential part of its technical architecture. Just a week earlier, the Ethereum team also published a ten-year roadmap focused on strengthening the network’s resilience to quantum threats, simplifying architecture, and increasing scalability.
