The Ethereum Foundation's Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE) team has unveiled a roadmap for integrating comprehensive end-to-end privacy features onto the Ethereum blockchain, aiming to make private onchain actions ubiquitous, affordable, and compliant.

Executive Summary

The Ethereum Foundation's Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE) initiative has published a strategic roadmap aimed at embedding comprehensive end-to-end privacy across the Ethereum blockchain's technical stack. Released on September 12, 2025, this roadmap outlines a vision for making private onchain actions as common and cost-effective as public ones, while ensuring regulatory compliance. The core focus areas include private writes, private reads, and private proving, addressing concerns that without robust privacy, Ethereum risks enabling global surveillance rather than digital freedom.

The Event in Detail

The Ethereum Foundation's Privacy & Scaling Explorations (PSE) team has rebranded as Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE), shifting its focus from speculative technology exploration to concrete problem-solving and ecosystem improvement. The roadmap, compiled by team member Sam Richards, highlights the mission to make privacy on Ethereum the norm. This involves ensuring private data, transactions, and identity are integral to Ethereum's role as infrastructure for global digital commerce.

The initiative targets three primary areas:

  • Private Writes: Aims to make private onchain actions seamless and affordable. Work continues on PlasmaFold, an experimental Layer 2 design, to integrate privacy transfer features, with a proof of concept anticipated by Devconnect on November 17. Efforts also include confidential DeFi protocols and a "state of private voting 2025" report.
  • Private Reads: Focuses on enabling users to query the blockchain without revealing their identity or intent, enhancing network-level privacy. This includes developing privacy-preserving RPC (Remote Procedure Call) services.
  • Private Proving: Seeks to make proof generation and verification fast, private, and accessible. This involves creating purpose-bound, data-minimized proofs for on/off-chain states, web data, documents, and identity attestations, and working towards easier and cheaper generation of zero-knowledge proofs on everyday devices.

Market Implications

The clear articulation of Ethereum's privacy roadmap is anticipated to increase developer interest in privacy solutions on the platform. Successful implementation of these features could fundamentally alter user interaction with the blockchain, promoting adoption for sensitive transactions and attracting institutional users prioritizing data privacy. This strategic move is poised to strengthen Ethereum's position as a global settlement layer. However, the complexity and extended timeline for such a significant architectural shift introduce variables regarding its immediate market impact and widespread adoption.

Expert Commentary

Sam Richards, a PSE team member, stated in the roadmap, "Ethereum is on the path to becoming the settlement layer for the world, but without strong privacy, it risks becoming the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom." He further emphasized, "If Ethereum fails to build privacy, it fails to protect the people who rely on it." This perspective underscores the critical nature of privacy for Ethereum's long-term mission and user base. The roadmap also acknowledges inspiration and input from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and independent researcher Oskar Thorén, among others, indicating broad ecosystem support for the initiative.

Broader Context

The PSE roadmap aligns with a growing industry and regulatory emphasis on privacy in digital assets. The SEC's "Project Crypto" initiative, announced by Chairman Paul Atkins in July 2025, highlights the need for modernized securities regulations for blockchain-based assets that maintain investor protection while enabling privacy. This framework incorporates principles like Confidential Audit Trails, Selective Disclosure Mechanisms, and Pseudonymized Reporting to allow regulatory oversight without exposing sensitive commercial or personal information. The PSE's vision explicitly includes privacy solutions that are "compliant with global regulations," recognizing the imperative for blockchain privacy to coexist with regulatory scrutiny. This proactive approach to privacy, aiming for solutions that are widely adopted across finance, identity, and governance, positions Ethereum to address a key barrier to broader institutional and mainstream adoption.