Ethereum News Today: Ethereum Privacy Cluster Launched to Keep Surveillance at Bay

The Ethereum Foundation has launched the Privacy Cluster, a 47-member initiative led by Igor Barinov, founder of Blockscout and Gnosis Chain, and Andy Guzman, who oversees applied cryptography and development for the Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) team Privacy Cluster Leadership Announcement | Ethereum Foundation^[1]. The cluster organizes its work across three pillars: Private Reads (enabling surveillance-free queries and authentication), Private Writes (securing payments and governance actions), and Private Proving (optimizing portable proofs for identity and data portability) Privacy Cluster Leadership Announcement | Ethereum Foundation^[1]. These efforts aim to shield user financial information, institutional data, and metadata while aligning with global privacy standards like the EU's GDPR .

The initiative builds on a decade of Ethereum's privacy research, including projects like Semaphore (anonymous signaling), MACI (private voting), and zkEmail. The cluster now prioritizes scalable solutions such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs), and tools like Kohaku, an open-source privacy-preserving wallet and SDK designed to simplify strong cryptography for mainstream users Ethereum Foundation Forms 47-Member Privacy Cluster to Make …^[2]. Institutional adoption is addressed through a dedicated task force translating compliance requirements into privacy specifications for real-world assets, payments, and governance Ethereum Foundation Expands Privacy Push With Dedicated …^[4].

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has emphasized privacy as essential to decentralization, warning that without robust protections, Ethereum risks becoming "the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom" Ethereum Foundation Forms 47-Member Privacy Cluster to Make …^[2]. The roadmap outlines near-term goals like integrating Railgun and Privacy Pools for shielded balances, generating unique addresses per dApp to avoid traceable links, and adopting standards like FOCIL and EIP-7701 to reduce reliance on public transaction relays Ethereum Foundation Forms 47-Member Privacy Cluster to Make …^[2]. These measures aim to minimize Layer-1 consensus changes while enabling private-by-default transactions.

The cluster's modular architecture separates data management responsibilities across Ethereum's execution, consensus, and data availability layers. Execution processes encrypted or blinded data, consensus validates proofs without handling sensitive information, and data availability stores anonymous shards temporarily, adhering to GDPR's data minimization principles . Projects like Aster, a decentralized exchange using zero-knowledge proofs to separate order intent from execution, demonstrate the cluster's focus on real-world applications Ethereum Foundation Forms 47-Member Privacy Cluster to Make …^[2]. Over 700 privacy-focused projects now exist in the Ethereum ecosystem, but the foundation aims to set industry standards through its primitives Ethereum Foundation Expands Privacy Push With Dedicated …^[4].

Regulatory alignment remains a priority. The cluster incorporates privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) like proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) to limit transaction blob lifespans and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) for secure computation. By designating data controllers to wallets and DApps while anonymizing lower-layer infrastructure, the foundation addresses GDPR's data erasure and portability requirements . This approach balances decentralization with compliance, ensuring Ethereum remains viable for institutions while preserving user autonomy.