Ethereum puts privacy back at the center of its roadmap.
This November, at the Devcon conference in Argentina, the Ethereum Foundation will unveil Kohaku, a new wallet framework designed to allow users to transact without exposing unnecessary personal or transactional details.
The project was presented on October 9 by the developer of the Foundation Nicolas Consignywho said the Kohaku demo and software development kit (SDK) would be ready for public testing at Devcon. The wallet is designed as both a browser extension and a reference implementation for developers who want to integrate privacy primitives directly into their applications.
These tools are designed to allow users to carry out transactions while revealing only the minimum information necessary to each party involved.
He explained:
“Kohaku aims to ensure that each party to a transaction has knowledge only of what is directly necessary for that transaction and is exposed to the absolute minimum of risk necessary to complete that transaction.”
Kohaku is just one part of a broader initiative by the Ethereum Foundation to make privacy “a first-class property” of the blockchain.
On October 8, the Foundation announced the creation of a new Privacy Cluster, a team of 47 engineers, researchers, and cryptographers dedicated to integrating privacy into every layer of the Ethereum stack.
According to the Foundation, this effort is necessary for the growth of blockchain because “privacy is normal and necessary to ensure that this infrastructure remains usable, credible and aligned with human freedom.”
As a result, the new cluster would work closely with the Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) initiative to advance privacy at the protocol level, from private payments to decentralized identity solutions.
Ethereum’s Focus on Privacy
The cluster’s work on privacy will cover several key areas that together form the foundation of Ethereum’s scalable privacy architecture.
At the research frontier, PSE teams are pioneering advanced cryptographic techniques such as zero-knowledge proofs, which enable greater scalability and privacy without compromising security.
Insights from this research directly inform the protocol layer, where developers integrate these advancements into Ethereum’s core infrastructure to ensure that privacy features are built into the network design rather than added as external patches.
Moving to the application layer, projects like Semaphore, MACI, and Stealth Addresses illustrate how privacy can improve practical use cases, from decentralized governance to everyday payments.
Privacy at scale is not just a technical challenge; This is a regulatory issue.
To this end, the Foundation launched an Institutional Privacy Working Group to explore how privacy-preserving technologies can coexist with compliance requirements. The group is expected to issue guidelines mapping privacy tools to real-world frameworks used by businesses, financial entities and auditors.
This approach echoes Vitalik Buterin’s long-held view that privacy should be a “human right built into the design of the protocol”, not an optional feature reserved for advanced users.
The market seems to validate the privacy narrative.
According to data cited by Crypto Rand, privacy-focused tokens have outperformed the broader crypto market by 65.3% over the past 30 days, reflecting growing interest in tools offering transaction-level privacy.
Ethereum’s renewed focus on privacy marks a philosophical shift: from reactive compliance to proactive design. As artificial intelligence expands data mining and governments step up on-chain surveillance, Ethereum is betting that a privacy-preserving base layer will be essential for widespread adoption.
If Kohaku and the Privacy Cluster succeed, the next iteration of Ethereum could make “private by default” not just a slogan, but a protocol standard.
