Overview
- At ECC2 on November 16, Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum’s core privacy cryptography is mature but real‑world privacy fails at the wallet layer.
- Kohaku is presented as a modular toolkit for developers, using primitives such as stealth addresses and zero‑knowledge proofs to enable private sends in mainstream wallets.
- Buterin’s roadmap extends beyond on‑chain proofs to include account recovery, multisig support, more reliable transaction broadcasting, privacy of reads, mixnets, risk‑based approvals, and on‑chain UI/version control.
- Coverage reports early prototypes and repository support tied to protocols like Railgun and Privacy Pools, including “proof of innocence,” with features still under development and no public release timeline.
- The Ethereum Foundation announced Kohaku on October 9 and is backing ongoing work through privacy-focused teams, with goals that include practical UX and options to publicly link activity when required for compliance.