The Ethereum Foundation has taken action! A team of 47 experts focuses on privacy technology to combat surveillance.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) officially announced the establishment of the “Privacy Cluster” team, composed of 47 top professionals in the blockchain industry, focusing on developing protocol-level privacy features for the Ethereum Layer 1 network. This move comes as global governments enhance financial surveillance and the European Union promotes the “Chat Control” bill, with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin publicly urging the community to fight against data surveillance, emphasizing that “we cannot make society safe by making people unsafe.”

Ethereum Foundation Privacy Cluster: 47 People Dream Team Officially Formed

The Ethereum Foundation announced on Wednesday the establishment of the “Privacy Cluster,” a professional team that brings together 47 blockchain industry experts, including researchers, engineers, and cryptographers, with the goal of delivering groundbreaking privacy protection features for the Ethereum Layer 1 smart contract network.

Core tasks include:

Private Payment System: Develop protocol-level privacy transaction features to protect user transaction privacy.

Decentralized Identity Solutions: Building a Privacy-Preserving DID (Decentralized Identity) System

Zero-Knowledge Infrastructure: Deploying ZK (Zero-Knowledge) technology to verify information without revealing specific content.

Metadata Protection: Prevent RPC (Remote Procedure Call) nodes from relaying user sensitive metadata.

The Ethereum Foundation is responsible for overseeing the overall development direction of the Ethereum network. The establishment of a dedicated privacy cluster demonstrates the Foundation's high regard for privacy protection and marks an important shift in the Ethereum technology roadmap.

Cooperation with PSE

The privacy cluster does not operate in isolation, but works closely with the PSE (Privacy & Scaling Explorations, Ethereum Privacy Managers) launched by the Ethereum Foundation in September. PSE is a research and development initiative focused on privacy, and the collaboration between the two teams will form a “research + engineering” dual-engine driving model.

Current Research Directions of PSE:

· Scalable solutions for privacy protection

· Anti-censorship communication protocol

· Anonymous Voting System

· Privacy-preserving data availability layer

The establishment of the privacy cluster has allowed the Ethereum Foundation to invest unprecedented manpower in the development of privacy technologies, demonstrating a commitment to elevating privacy features to the core layer of the protocol.

Ethereum Privacy Technology Roadmap Decoded

The privacy protection development plan announced by the Ethereum Foundation covers multiple technical aspects, aiming to comprehensively protect user privacy from the protocol layer to the application layer.

Zero-Knowledge Proof is an important breakthrough in the field of cryptography, allowing one party to prove to another that a statement is true without revealing any information beyond the truth of the statement.

ZK Application Scenarios of Ethereum Privacy Clusters:

Private transaction verification: proving the legality of the transaction without exposing the amount and address.

Authentication: Proving age or qualifications without revealing specific information

Compliance certification: meeting regulatory requirements without sacrificing privacy.

Smart contract privacy computation: executing logic without exposing input data

Currently, Ethereum's second-layer solutions (such as zkSync and StarkNet) have widely adopted ZK technology to achieve scalability, and the work of privacy clusters will deeply integrate these technologies into the Ethereum layer one protocol.

PlasmaFold: Confidential Transfers on a Layer 2 Network

PlasmaFold is a second-layer privacy network based on the Plasma framework, designed for confidential transfers. Unlike traditional Ethereum transactions which are public and transparent, the sender, receiver, and amount information of PlasmaFold transactions are all encrypted.

Technical Advantages:

· Inherit the security of the Ethereum mainnet

· Balancing transaction privacy and scalability

· Compatible with existing Ethereum tools

· Optional Disclosure Function (Meets Compliance Requirements)

· RPC Node Metadata Protection

When users interact with Ethereum through a wallet, they usually need to connect to an RPC node. In a traditional architecture, the RPC node is able to record sensitive metadata such as the user's IP address, the queried address, transaction time, and so on.

Privacy cluster solution:

· Implement end-to-end encrypted communication

· Develop a decentralized RPC network

· Uses onion routing technology to obfuscate request sources

· Principle of Minimizing Metadata Collection

These measures will significantly reduce the ability of third-party node service providers to track user behavior.

Privacy Crisis: Why is the Ethereum Foundation Taking Action Now?

The Ethereum Foundation's decision to vigorously promote privacy features in 2025 is no coincidence, but a direct response to the current global privacy crisis.

1. EU's “Chat Control” Bill Threat

The EU-proposed “Chat Control” law has sparked strong reactions from the crypto community. This legislation allows European governments unrestricted access to all message traffic, including encrypted communication content.

Core Provisions of the Bill:

· The communication platform scans all message content

· Requires the implantation of a backdoor in the encryption system

· The government can access communication data without a court order.

· Covers all digital content such as text, images, videos, etc.

The cryptocurrency community generally believes that this law severely infringes on personal privacy and may drive a large-scale user migration to Web3 decentralized communication solutions.

2. Vitalik Buterin: A Call Against Surveillance

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly spoken out, urging the cryptocurrency community to “fight against chat control,” warning on social media:

“You cannot ensure safety in society by making people unsafe. We should all enjoy privacy and security, and our private communications should not have inevitable backdoors that can be hacked.”

Buterin pointed out that there are two major fatal risks associated with the large-scale data collected by the government:

Abuse of power: History has repeatedly shown that surveillance power is easily abused for political purposes.

Data breach: Centrally stored data becomes a “honeypot” target for hackers.

His position has received widespread support from the crypto community and has provided an ideological foundation for the Ethereum Foundation's privacy cluster.

3. Discord Data Breach Incident Sounds the Alarm

Just the week the Ethereum Foundation announced the privacy cluster, the popular online communication platform Discord suffered a serious hack, further highlighting the risks of centralized data storage.

Event Details:

· Hackers breached the database storing user age verification photos.

· The leaked data includes government-issued identity cards and passports.

· About 2.1 million user information is at risk of leakage.

· Ransomware platform, threatening to expose data

David Holtzman, the Chief Strategy Officer of Naoris protocol and a former military intelligence professional, told Cointelegraph: “Information stored on centralized servers makes it a honeypot for hackers and cybercriminals. Decentralized privacy protection solutions are no longer a luxury, but a necessity.”

The Discord incident provides a real-world case study supporting the privacy strategy of the Ethereum Foundation—under a centralized architecture, regardless of how stringent the security measures are, the risk of a single point of failure always exists.

The Return of the Cryptopunk Spirit

Privacy is at the core of the Cypherpunk spirit that underpins cryptocurrencies and data encryption. In the 1990s, the Cypherpunk movement advocated for the use of cryptography to protect personal privacy against state surveillance, and this idea directly gave rise to the birth of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Core Principles of the Crypto Punk Manifesto:

· Privacy is a necessary condition for an open society.

· Privacy is not a secret; it is the power of selective disclosure.

· Cryptography is the ultimate weapon for protecting privacy.

Individuals should have control over their own data.

However, as the cryptocurrency industry gradually becomes mainstream, many projects have sacrificed privacy protection in the pursuit of performance and usability. The characteristic of Ethereum where all transactions are public and transparent is beneficial for auditing and verification, but it also leads to the complete exposure of users' financial privacy.

The Ethereum Foundation's privacy cluster marks the industry's return to its roots, reinstituting privacy protection to a central position without sacrificing decentralization and security.

2025: The Turning Point for Privacy Technology

Multiple factors are converging, making 2025 a critical turning point for the development of privacy technologies:

Surveillance technology upgrade: Artificial intelligence exponentially enhances data analysis capabilities.

Legislative pressure increases: Many governments are promoting anti-privacy legislation.

Improved technology maturity: Technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs are now ready for large-scale application.

User Awareness Awakens: Frequent Data Breaches Heighten Privacy Awareness

Business model transformation: Privacy protection has become a core element of product competitiveness.

The Ethereum Foundation's privacy cluster has precisely seized this historical window period, with the hope of leading the entire blockchain industry's innovation in privacy technology.

Impact of Ethereum Privacy Features on the Ecosystem

The work of the privacy cluster will have a profound impact on the Ethereum ecosystem, benefiting everyone from individual users to enterprise applications.

1. Individual User Level:

Transaction privacy protection to prevent wealth tracking.

Identity privacy protection, preventing on-chain behavior association

Communication privacy protection, secure decentralized social.

Voting privacy protection, true anonymous governance

2. Enterprise Application Layer:

Protection of trade secrets, operating on a public blockchain without leaking strategies.

Compliance and privacy balance, meeting regulations without complete transparency.

Supply chain privacy, protecting sensitive business information

Maintaining competitive advantage, preventing front-running and imitation.

3. DeFi protocol layer:

Private Order Book, Prevent MEV Attacks

Privacy lending, without exposing the scale of collateral.

Dark pool trading, large transactions do not affect the market

Privacy stablecoin, protecting payment privacy

These improvements will bring Ethereum closer to the vision of “programmable privacy”—users can freely choose the level of transparency based on the scenario.

The establishment of the Ethereum Foundation's privacy cluster marks the formal inclusion of privacy protection into the core strategy of the world's largest smart contract platform. In an era of increasingly stringent digital surveillance, Ethereum chooses to stand on the side of user privacy, returning to the original ethos of cryptopunk. With the continuous efforts of 47 top experts, we have reason to expect that Ethereum will soon provide revolutionary solutions that balance transparency and privacy. Follow the official channel of the Ethereum Foundation to get the latest updates on privacy technology development.