Ethereum's Privacy Revolution: The Evolution from HTTP to HTTPS is Happening Now

During Devconnect Buenos Aires 2025, the Ethereum Privacy Stack event, co-hosted by Privacy & Scaling Explorations (PSE), Web3Privacy Now, and the Ethereum Foundation, became the most significant gathering on privacy in the history of the Web3 ecosystem. Vitalik Buterin, Tor project founder Roger Dingledine, top legal experts, and privacy protocol development teams such as Railgun and Aztec gathered to jointly develop a privacy roadmap for the next 3 to 5 years at a turning point where regulatory pressure and technological maturity intersect.

The Fundamental Change in Ethereum’s Privacy Definition

The biggest consensus emerging from this event was the concept of Holistic Privacy. Traditionally, privacy was limited to on-chain tools like zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and mixers. However, now, that definition has been dramatically expanded.

Participants agreed that from Private Reads to Private Writes, the network transmission layer (Tor), RPC read layer, data storage layer, and frontend must all be encompassed within a complete closed loop.

Vitalik and Roger Dingledine emphasized that if the underlying network leaks IP addresses, the anonymity at the application layer becomes meaningless. Given that about three-quarters of Bitcoin nodes are already connected via onion addresses, a similar path for Ethereum was proposed.

“Stigmatizing Non-Privacy Behavior”: Web3’s HTTPS Moment

The key shift highlighted by participants was elevating privacy from a “geek” or “hacker” privilege to a “default” in everyday life. This is very similar to how the internet transitioned from HTTP to HTTPS.

In the early days of the internet, privacy was also lacking due to immature technology, regulatory uncertainty, and performance overhead. Web3 is currently at the same stage. Let’s Encrypt made obtaining certificates free and easy, and browsers marked HTTP as “not secure,” making non-privacy behaviors abnormal.

Web3 needs the same strategy. By 2026, reduce the cost of privacy-preserving transactions to about twice that of regular transactions and enable one-click seamless experiences. This will allow not only individual investors but also traditional financial institutions, which currently lack the necessary confidentiality, to participate.

Compliance or Freedom: The Final Ideological Battle

While the technical roadmap becomes clearer, a fundamental ideological conflict has emerged. The biggest debate is between “Compliance Privacy” and “Unpermissioned Privacy”.

One side, represented by Privacy Pools, aims to isolate illegal funds through “Dissociate” proofs, seeking regulatory acceptance and institutional adoption. The other side adheres to a pure cryptopunk spirit, believing that any compromise on compliance will ultimately lead to censorship.

Andy Guzman from PSE warned of a potential “civil war” over whether privacy features should be integrated into Ethereum’s core protocol layer (L1) or remain at the application layer. L1 integration would bring unified liquidity and default privacy but also increase regulatory risks and protocol complexity. This choice will likely determine Ethereum’s political attributes.

Building Multi-layer Defenses: From Hardware to Detection Measures

Discussions extended beyond software, delving into physical and network layers. The community recognized that if the underlying hardware cannot be trusted, all higher-layer cryptography is built on sand.

Concepts include fully open-source hardware chip designs, self-hosting at home, and implementing ZK signatures on hardware wallets. An intriguing possibility is that Ethereum validators (Stakers) could operate Tor relay nodes simultaneously, strengthening detection measures without legal risks while maintaining unified liquidity.

The Urgency of “Self-Help”: Call for Developer Protection Funds

Facing incidents like the Tornado Cash developers, an urgent “self-help” atmosphere pervaded the event. Legal experts and developers called for the establishment of a strong legal defense fund and policy lobbying organizations.

Current anti-terror laws are very broad, and acts “aimed at destroying political or economic structures” could be classified as terrorism. This poses a risk that privacy and DeFi developers might unknowingly be labeled as terrorists.

Why doesn’t the crypto industry invest billions of dollars in legal defense and policy lobbying? This question transcends mere compliance issues and is positioned as a survival war for freedom in the digital age.

Privacy Technology Roadmap to 2026

Andy Guzman’s final prediction is bold: by November 2026 (next Devcon), privacy transactions on Ethereum will be fully resolved.

Over 35 teams are exploring about 13 different technical approaches, from stealth addresses to Privacy Pools. The richness of this ecosystem guarantees the emergence of excellent solutions.

Future solutions will feature low costs (about twice that of regular transactions), low latency, and one-click experiences, ushering in an era where privacy is perceived as non-privacy behavior. Just as the internet transitioned from HTTP to HTTPS, Ethereum is steadily moving into a new privacy-first era.