Ethereum Privacy Major Move: From Research to Product Delivery

ETH has just restructured its privacy division, and this isn’t a simple personnel change—it’s about upgrading privacy from “academic research” to “real-world product deployment.”

Key Changes

New Leadership Team: Igor Barinov (founder of Blockscout) serves as Privacy @ EF Coordinator, and Andy Guzman takes over as head of the PSE team. Both have strong backgrounds—one is an infrastructure expert, the other specializes in applied cryptography.

Restructured Architecture: Decentralized privacy projects are being consolidated into a unified “Privacy @ EF” cluster, with three clearly defined directions:

• Private Reads: Invisible queries and browsing (anti-surveillance)
• Private Writes: Concealing transactions, on-chain behaviors like governance voting
• Private Proving: Portable zero-knowledge proofs (cross-chain, cross-application reuse)

Why Now?

EF put it bluntly: “To make Ethereum a civilization-scale infrastructure, privacy can’t stay at the paper stage. It needs resources, teams, and large-scale deployment.” In other words—the previous privacy efforts were scattered, now they’re focusing resources to build something real.

On-chain Significance

• For Users: Prevents metadata leaks and protects personal financial privacy
• For Institutions: Meets compliance requirements (especially with increasingly strict privacy regulations in Europe and the US)
• Technical Path: Compatible with L1/L2 designs, client-side proofing models reaching maturity

Data Highlights

EF has confirmed there are 700+ privacy-related projects in the ecosystem. This restructuring aims to provide a unified coordination center, accelerating the transition from experimentation to deployment.

Current ETH Price: Around $4,380. The maturity of privacy infrastructure has always been regarded as a key indicator of Ethereum’s long-term competitiveness.