Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has laid out a new roadmap aimed at making the blockchain more private — without changing how the core system works.
The proposal, shared on April 11 through the Ethereum Magicians forum, focuses on improving privacy for users who want to keep their activity more discreet on the network. Instead of one big upgrade, it’s a series of smaller steps designed to make Ethereum feel more private by default.
What’s in the Plan?
Vitalik’s roadmap looks at four areas of privacy and offers both short-term fixes and long-term improvements. These include:
- More privacy for payments made on-chain
- Partially hiding what people do inside decentralized apps (dApps)
- Keeping data private when users just read info from the blockchain
- Better protection of user identities at the network level
Key Features Suggested by Buterin
- Privacy Tools Built Into Wallets:
Buterin wants wallets like MetaMask to offer “shielded balances” — this means your transaction history could be hidden by default, without needing to use separate privacy wallets. - A New Address for Each App You Use:
This would prevent people from tracking all your actions across different apps using the same Ethereum address. It might be less convenient, but it would greatly improve privacy. - Private “Send-to-Yourself” Transactions:
Sometimes users move ETH or tokens between their own wallets. Buterin says these should also be private by default to support the address-per-app model. - Use of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs):
These tech tools could improve privacy right now when users talk to RPC nodes (the servers wallets connect to). In the future, something called Private Information Retrieval (PIR) could help even more. - Bigger Long-Term Upgrades:
He also mentioned future changes like EIP-7701 (account abstraction) and FOCIL (Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists). These would help privacy tools work without depending on centralized relays, making Ethereum more resistant to censorship.
Why This Matters
Privacy has always been a hot topic in the Ethereum world. While many users love the transparency of blockchain, others are concerned about how easy it is to trace someone’s entire transaction history.
This new plan could change that — letting users interact with apps and send money without leaving such a clear digital trail.
In fact, Ethereum has already been exploring zero-knowledge (zk) tech, like zk-rollups, which help compress and privatize data. But as one analyst put it:
“If they want real privacy without making Layer 1 too heavy, adopting zk tech is the key.”
What’s the Community Saying?
Many in the crypto space are excited about the new privacy roadmap.
“Vitalik’s finally giving privacy the attention it deserves,” one community member said. “This looks like a solid step forward.”
Others were a bit more cautious, warning that even with a solid plan, putting it into action could be challenging.
What’s Next?
This roadmap comes just as Ethereum is preparing for its next major update, Pectra, which focuses on performance and usability. While Pectra works on speed and efficiency, Buterin’s privacy-focused roadmap could help Ethereum become more user-friendly and secure.
If successful, these updates could make Ethereum even more appealing to everyday users and organizations that value privacy — a feature that’s becoming more important in the digital world.
