Catenaa, Tuesday, October 14, 2025- The Ethereum Foundation has established the Privacy Cluster, a 47-member team of engineers, researchers, and cryptographers led by Igor Barinov, founder of Blockscout and xDai, to enhance privacy on the Ethereum blockchain.
Announced Wednesday, the initiative seeks to make privacy a fundamental element of Ethereum by strengthening protections against surveillance, metadata leaks, and transactional exposure.
The foundation said the move complements community-led projects and introduces a roadmap toward “end-to-end privacy” across Ethereum’s infrastructure.
The new unit builds on the Foundation’s Privacy & Scaling Explorations team, active since 2018, which focused on research into cryptographic solutions such as zero-knowledge proofs.
The Privacy Cluster aims to integrate these advances directly into Ethereum’s core protocol, targeting areas like confidential transfers and secure RPC node communication.
In its statement, the Foundation emphasized that Ethereum was designed as the foundation for digital trust and that such trust depends on user privacy.
The Cluster will also direct funding and expertise toward privacy-focused tools, wallets, and identity applications, expanding Ethereum’s defensive framework against data tracking.
Analysts view the initiative as a significant step in Ethereum’s transition toward secure, private blockchain operations amid rising global scrutiny of blockchain transparency and data security standards.
