Behind Vitalik Buterin's Moves: Privacy, Kohaku, and ETH Donations

Analyzing Vitalik Buterin's Motivations: Privacy, Kohaku, and ETH Donations

Vitalik Buterin's increasing interest in projects like Kohaku and his substantial ETH donations raise many questions. These moves are often interpreted as mere acts of charity, but the reality is far more complex. It's about the evolution of privacy models in the crypto world, from 'absolute privacy' to the fundamental concept of 'privacy as security'.

The Evolution of Privacy Models

1. Absolute Privacy:

This model, represented by tools like Tornado Cash, Railgun, Aztec, and Monero, relies on creating a 'black box' of privacy. Once funds enter this box, all transaction information, including sender, receiver, and amount, is encrypted, making it invisible to anyone, including regulatory bodies. However, this approach raises concerns about its potential use in money laundering, making it susceptible to regulatory sanctions. Therefore, solutions based on absolute privacy must focus on exploring ways to achieve regulatory compliance.

2. Opt-in Privacy:

This model represents a compromise, as seen with Zcash's dual address system (transparent and shielded). This system allows users to choose between using fully shielded addresses (similar to absolute privacy) or transparent addresses for regulatory compliance. While a step in the right direction, this approach faces challenges. With the option of using transparent addresses available, using shielded addresses might attract unwanted attention, thereby damaging the concept of privacy and making it a privilege for the few rather than a basic right for all.

3. Privacy as Security:

Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation aim to elevate opt-in privacy to 'privacy as security' as a standard feature. Vitalik believes that 'Privacy is not a feature, it's a prerequisite for security.' The challenge lies in how to ensure privacy without antagonizing regulatory bodies. The proposed solution is 'default privacy + opt-in disclosure,' an approach that combines decentralized privacy protection with regulatory compliance.

Kohaku and Technical Solutions

Kohaku's design follows the path of Stealth hidden addresses + Elliptic Curve Cryptography + ZK-proof, aiming to strike a balance between privacy protection and opt-in disclosure. Kohaku acts as a modular privacy embedding layer, which can be directly integrated into wallets to promote privacy adoption through application habit migration. However, Vitalik recognizes that the biggest challenge lies in 'off-chain environments.' While there are many decentralized verification infrastructures and technologies like ZK and FHE on-chain to achieve balance, protecting the privacy of user metadata off-chain and the decentralized message transmission layer poses a significant obstacle.

Donations to Session and SimpleXChat

Vitalik's donations to Session and SimpleXChat are aimed at exploring how to achieve end-to-end encrypted communication in a decentralized environment, thereby completing the full privacy pipeline both on and off-chain. Session's no phone number registration and SimpleX's ability to remove ID both reinforce the fact that privacy (off-chain: IP addresses, communication objects, etc.; on-chain: transaction links, interaction details, etc.) is part of the underlying security framework.

Conclusion

In line with Vitalik's direction, many technical projects can benefit from this trend, including the general ZK aggregation verification layer boundless_xyz, the embeddable intent privacy transaction layer anoma, and the cryptographic holy grail FHE solutions zama, among others. Do you understand the bigger picture now?