If you have been keeping up with how privacy policies are changing, this week brought some big news, as Vitalik Buterin just dropped what he is calling his “current thoughts” on a plan to boost privacy in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The aim is to make changes that will not cause too much trouble for the main protocol, while still protecting users’ activity from any unwanted attention.
Instead of suggesting major changes to the consensus layer, Buterin’s roadmap presents a series of small, application-level and wallet-integrated improvements, with each one designed to fix a specific, noticeable problem with how privacy currently works on the chain.
One of the main ideas, not unfamiliar to privacy advocates, is that users should not have to make a special effort to opt into privacy, like switching to niche wallets or adjusting complicated settings, just to avoid broadcasting their financial activity.
New norm
Instead, tools like Privacy Pools or Railgun should be available inside mainstream wallets, with features like shielded balances and private sending becoming a standard UX option, ideally turned on by default, according to Buterin.
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This is not just about hiding individual transactions but about unlinking a user’s footprint across apps too.
Using a separate ETH address for each app might seem like a step back in usability, Buterin says, but it is a trade-off the ecosystem should start to embrace, especially since in-application wallets and cross-chain use cases are already pushing for similar changes in how users manage addresses.
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While it is not a complete shift toward anonymity, it does show that privacy, which has always been an optional feature, is gradually becoming the norm.