Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published a detailed post on the Ethereum Magicians forum laying out “a maximally simple L1 privacy roadmap” for Ethereum, which he then amplified on X alongside a complementary privacy vision by community member pcaversaccio, encouraging the public to read both perspectives. His roadmap focuses on improving user privacy on Ethereum without major consensus changes, targeting four areas: privacy of on-chain payments, partial anonymization of activity inside applications, privacy for reads to the chain (RPC calls), and network-level anonymization. To achieve this, Buterin proposes a nine-step plan that includes integrating privacy tools like Railgun or Privacy Pools directly into mainstream wallets with shielded balances and “send from shielded balance” options by default; moving toward a one-address-per-application standard, supported by privacy-preserving send-to-self transfers; and implementing FOCIL and EIP-7701 so privacy protocols can operate without centralized relays, improving censorship resistance for all transactions. He also calls for deploying TEE-based RPC privacy as an interim measure and later replacing it with more robust private information retrieval (PIR), having wallets connect to multiple RPC nodes (ideally one per dapp, optionally via mixnets), developing proof aggregation to reduce gas costs for privacy protocols, and building privacy-preserving keystore wallets that allow users to upgrade keys or verification logic without publicly linking their private notes across L1 and L2s. By sharing pcaversaccio’s separate post and inviting readers to compare both visions, Buterin is positioning privacy-by-default as a central design goal for Ethereum’s future, while explicitly opening the roadmap to community feedback and alternative approaches.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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