Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, proposed a plan to enhance user privacy in the network, highlighting four critical areas.
Four Key Areas for Privacy Enhancement
In a recent post, Vitalik Buterin identified four critical areas where user privacy is insufficiently protected:
* on-chain payments (visible to everyone); * interactions in dApps (with the potential for monitoring); * RPC queries (where requests are tracked); * the network itself, which records user movements.
New Standards and Wallet Solutions
Buterin urges wallet developers like MetaMask and Rabby to integrate privacy-enhancing tools such as Railgun and Privacy Pools. Users will have a ‘shielded’ balance by default and access to anonymous payment options. Additionally, he suggests using different addresses for each application, complicating the monitoring of user actions.
Technical Innovations for Data Protection
Beyond the previously mentioned proposals, Buterin emphasizes the importance of standards like FOCIL and EIP-7701, which will allow privacy protocols to operate without central points. He also advocates for the use of Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) and PIR systems to enhance the privacy of user actions. Transaction mixing essentially allows several operations to be merged into a single cryptographic proof, improving anonymity.
Thus, Vitalik Buterin proposes a minimalist yet ambitious plan for enhancing privacy in Ethereum that could be implemented without the need for major changes to the network's structure.
