Vitalik Buterin has a message for the Ethereum community: enough with the privacy think pieces, start building the privacy tools.
On May 26, the Ethereum co-founder posted on X urging a shift from discussing privacy narratives to actually deploying privacy solutions across the network. The call to action came as Kohaku, an Ethereum Foundation-backed open-source SDK, advances toward integrating shielded transaction capabilities directly into Ethereum wallets.
From manifesto to middleware
Buterin first laid out his privacy ambitions in a December 2023 blog post titled “Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again,” arguing that Ethereum had drifted too far from its original ethos of decentralization and self-sovereignty.
Then came the April 14, 2025 blog post, which outlined a concrete privacy roadmap. That plan focused on two core priorities: private on-chain payments and private RPC reads.
