Vitalik Buterin shares new proposals aimed at improving Ethereum’s user privacy without making any major changes to the network itself.
In an April 11 post on the Ethereum Magicians Forum, the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) explained how wallets and developers can take small but meaningful steps to protect users without waiting for a long-term upgrade to core protocols. Buterin’s post highlights the need to directly integrate privacy tools such as Railgun and Privacy Pool into existing wallets.
Instead of building another app, the goal is to make privacy a natural part of how users send and receive funds. The wallet includes a shield balance, allowing users to send transactions personally by default.
To support this, the roadmap includes calls to adopt Focil and EIP-7701, two technical upgrades that allow easy implementation of privacy protocols such as Tornado Cash and Railgun without the need for intensive relayers.
Another part of the plan is based on privacy at the UX level and encourages users to use a different wallet address for each app they interact with. This makes it difficult for external observers to link someone’s actions on different platforms.
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The proposal also touches on improving privacy when an app connects to the Ethereum Network. For now, a reliable execution environment can help protect your user data. However, in the future, Buterin suggests switching to searching for personal information. This is a safer solution that is not efficient enough to use.
Buterin’s proposal makes it easier to adopt, as it does not require changes to the basic layer of Ethereum. However, some of these changes may involve trade-offs between user experience and convenience, which may result in slower adoption.
This proposal comes at a time when Ethereum’s market performance is under pressure. As of April 11, Ethereum was trading at around $1,547, a 20% decline over the past two weeks, according to Crypto.News price tracker. Cryptocurrency fell 45% in Q1. Additionally, according to Santiment Data, it has lost 77% against Bitcoin since December 2021.
Ethereum is a source of humor for many top cap crypto traders, with the $eth/$BTC ratio down by -77% since December 2021. It’s definitely not. Read Deep Diving. https://t.co/jok5gni7dm
– santiment (@santimentfeed) April 11, 2025
One Santiment Analyst said the new updates make it difficult for the average investor to understand the project’s roadmap. While many Altcoins outweigh that, Ethereum’s growth has slowed down due to constant change and unclear messaging.
Analysts also pointed to the growing competition from the new, simpler blockchain as one of the reasons for the price decline for Ethereum.
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