The roadmap incorporates input from key figures like Vitalik Buterin and independent researcher Oskar Thorén, reflecting a collaborative effort within the Ethereum community.

The roadmap also explores protecting personal data broadcast via RPC services and expanding zero-knowledge proofs for private identity solutions, aiming to prevent data leakage and enhance user privacy.

The team is working on privacy-enhancing protocols like zkTLS, TLSNotary, ORAM, PIR, and sphinx mixing, aiming to integrate these into wallets and browsers for better privacy.

Vitalik Buterin advocates for privacy as a fundamental human right, warning that without strong protections, Ethereum risks becoming a tool for surveillance rather than a platform for privacy and freedom, potentially driving users towards more private solutions.

A notable project includes PlasmaFold, an experimental Layer 2 solution for private transfers, with a proof of concept expected at the Devconnect conference in November 2025.

The Privacy Stewards for Ethereum (PSE), formerly the Ethereum Foundation's Privacy & Scaling Explorations team, has shifted from cryptography exploration to problem-driven development, focusing on making privacy the default in Ethereum's technology stack.

This push for privacy comes amid growing concerns over digital financial surveillance, as governments in the US and EU consider expanding surveillance measures and requiring government IDs for crypto activities.

To support these privacy goals, PSE plans to collaborate with protocol teams to ensure layer-1 changes support censorship-resistant, intermediary-free transactions.

Industry experts warn that the transparency of public ledgers exposes sensitive data such as salaries and business deals, which could hinder mainstream adoption by institutions and individuals, similar to early internet days when lack of encryption limited credit card use.

Their roadmap targets three core areas: enabling private on-chain writes, private reads for surveillance-free queries, and private proving for accessible data verification, emphasizing privacy as essential for Ethereum's role as a global settlement infrastructure.

PSE's recent projects include PlasmaFold for private transfers, the Kohaku privacy wallet with zk account recovery, and private governance models, all aimed at integrating privacy into the Ethereum ecosystem.

European regulators' GDPR requirements are influencing privacy developments, encouraging off-chain personal data handling and encrypted references to comply with privacy laws, adding urgency to privacy enhancements.

Efforts in private proving focus on making zero-knowledge proof generation cheaper and more accessible, with a 'prove anywhere' approach to enable everyday device use.