The Ethereum Foundation has announced a new strategic direction for its privacy initiatives, marked by the introduction of the "Privacy Stewards of Ethereum" (PSE) and the release of a comprehensive roadmap for end-to-end privacy on the Ethereum network. This announcement signals a heightened commitment to making privacy a fundamental aspect of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Rebranding and Refocusing

The Ethereum Foundation's "Privacy & Scaling Explorations" team has been rebranded as "Privacy Stewards of Ethereum" (PSE). This change reflects a shift in focus from exploratory research to solving tangible problems and improving privacy outcomes within the Ethereum ecosystem. The PSE's mission is to ensure that privacy goals are achieved at the application layer, collaborating with protocol teams to implement necessary layer-1 changes that enable robust, censorship-resistant privacy.

The Privacy Roadmap: A Three-Pronged Approach

The roadmap released by the PSE outlines a clear vision for building comprehensive privacy into Ethereum, focusing on three key areas:

• Private Writes: The goal is to make private on-chain actions as seamless and cost-effective as public ones. This involves developing technologies that allow users to make transactions and interact with smart contracts without revealing their data. The team plans to continue its work on PlasmaFold, an experimental Layer 2 design, to add support for privacy transfer features and aims to debut a proof of concept by Devconnect, the Ethereum developer-focused conference starting on November 17 in Argentina.
• Private Reads: This aims to enable users to read data from the blockchain without exposing their identity or intentions. The team is working towards privacy-preserving Remote Procedure Call (RPC) services.
• Private Proving: This area focuses on making the generation and verification of proofs fast, private, and accessible. This involves enabling data portability and verifiable data provenance across environments by delivering purpose-bound, data-minimized proofs for on/off-chain states, web data, documents, and identity attestations.

These three focus areas will guide the PSE's efforts for the next few years, although specific priorities and initiatives may evolve with the ecosystem.

The Imperative of Privacy on Ethereum

The PSE emphasizes that privacy is not merely an optional feature but a critical necessity for Ethereum to fulfill its potential as a global settlement layer. Without strong privacy, Ethereum risks becoming a tool for surveillance rather than a platform for freedom. The roadmap asserts that if Ethereum fails to build privacy, it will fail to protect its users.

Key Goals and Initiatives

Over the next 3-6 months, the PSE has outlined several key goals:

• Enabling private transfers through the development of the PlasmaFold layer-2 network.
• Confidential voting mechanisms. The team is also planning to release a "state of private voting 2025" report to summarize efforts on private voting.
• Privacy in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, likely designing protocols that ensure privacy while maintaining compliance for institutional clients, and continuing work on private computation projects.
• Exploring solutions for personal data being broadcast through remote procedure call (RPC) services.
• Developing private identity solutions using zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.

Broader Industry Concerns

This initiative arrives amidst growing concerns about digital financial surveillance as cryptocurrencies gain mainstream adoption and attract increased government scrutiny. Regulations are being considered that could involve surveillance measures to track crypto activity, highlighting the need for privacy-enhancing technologies.

A Vision for the Future

The PSE envisions a future where digital infrastructure respects privacy by default, empowering users with the ability to organize, express, and transact freely. By building open-source tools, researching new applications, and coordinating with the Ethereum community, the PSE aims to make privacy a core feature of Ethereum's application layer.