In the post-Tornado Cash era, Ethereum unveils a new ace of "compliance privacy."

Written by: Luke, Mars Finance

"Without strong privacy, Ethereum risks becoming a pillar of global surveillance rather than a pillar of global freedom." This is a warning written by the Ethereum privacy team in their latest roadmap. By 2025, when the legal battle over Tornado Cash is settled, the entire crypto world will realize that on the road to Web3, privacy can never become a "lawless territory" against regulation.

The answer will be revealed on September 14, 2025. The "end-to-end privacy roadmap" released by the Ethereum Foundation is like a "trump card" played in the fog. The core of this card is not a return to the old path of anonymity, but rather the creation of an entirely new paradigm—"Compliant Privacy." This is not just a technological upgrade, but a profound strategic evolution by Ethereum in the post-Tornado Cash era, seeking mass adoption. This article will deeply analyze this roadmap, interpreting how it cleverly balances the two ends of the scale, paving a broader and more solid path for Ethereum's next decade.

From "Explorer" to "Steward": An Evolution Driven by Responsibility

The release of the roadmap is accompanied by a key change: the former "Privacy and Scalability Exploration Team" has been renamed to "Ethereum Privacy Steward" (PSE). In today's increasingly clear regulatory landscape, this name change carries significant meaning. "Explorers" can roam freely in uncharted territories, while "Stewards" must carefully manage the entire estate under existing rules. This marks a shift in Ethereum's privacy development from pure technical idealism to more responsible and pragmatic engineering practices.

As stated in its official charter, the team's mindset is shifting from "pursuing cool technology" to "solving specific problems," from "focusing on internal projects" to "driving ecosystem outcomes." This is precisely the point repeatedly emphasized by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin in recent years—privacy is an empowering technology, not a tool for opposition.

The Three Pillars of "Compliant Privacy"

The essence of this roadmap lies in the fact that it is not a single privacy protocol, but rather a systematic framework tailored for "compliant privacy" composed of "privacy writing", "privacy reading", and "privacy proofs". Its ultimate vision is to "make privacy on Ethereum the norm, rather than the exception".

1. Private Writes (Private Writes): Verifiable Anonymity

In traditional models, every on-chain transfer you make is like publicly shouting in a world square. The stealth addresses promoted by PSE aim to turn this shouting into delivering an encrypted private letter. But the key point is that this letter is not untraceable. The holder of the letter, that is you, possesses the unique key to decrypt and display the contents and flow path of the letter. This means that when necessary (for example, in the face of compliance checks or audits), you can proactively prove your transaction history to authorized parties without exposing it to the whole world. This is a form of "controllable anonymity," which is the basis for achieving compliance.

2. Private Reads (Private Reads): Defending User Intent

Privacy is not only about transactions but also about intentions. When you query on-chain data, RPC node service providers can easily spy on your actions, which is unacceptable in the financial world. The goal of privacy RPC services is to cut off this spying and protect users' fundamental digital rights. In a mature and regulated financial system, it is the basic responsibility of infrastructure providers to ensure that clients' query intentions are not abused. This initiative aligns the Ethereum infrastructure with this standard.

3. Privacy Proof (Private Proving): The Magic of "Selective Disclosure"

This is the "Ace" in the "compliance privacy" trump card. The true power of Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) lies in achieving "selective disclosure." Imagine that in the future, you need to prove two things: (A) your funds do not come from sanctioned addresses; (B) your account balance exceeds 100 ETH to meet the entry requirements of a certain DeFi protocol.

With the help of ZKP, you can generate a cryptographic proof that allows protocols or regulators to verify the authenticity and confirm that statements (A) and (B) are true, while they do not see any specific transaction records or exact balances throughout the process. PSE is committed to making this proof process inexpensive and fast, in order to put this powerful compliance tool in the hands of every developer and user.

From Theory to Practice: Compliance Insights from Two Leading Projects

This blueprint is not just a paper concept. The roadmap outlines a series of specific short-term initiatives, the most striking of which is the proactive embrace of institutional adoption.

PSE has explicitly stated that it will launch the "Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF)" to collaborate with the Ethereum Foundation's enterprise team, aiming to directly eliminate the barriers to institutional adoption by establishing privacy standards and developing proof of concepts (PoC). This thoroughly confirms our article's argument of "compliance privacy"—Ethereum is taking proactive steps to tailor the privacy solutions needed by Wall Street and global enterprises.

At the same time, experimental projects like PlasmaFold have set a clear goal to showcase their privacy transaction PoC at the upcoming Devconnect conference. To accelerate the development of the entire ecosystem, PSE will also collaborate with industry partners such as Aztec to enhance the security and toolchain of the Noir language, ensuring that the next generation of privacy applications can safely flourish on Ethereum.

Crossroads of Choice: Why "Privacy Platforms" Are Superior to "Privacy Coins"?

The Tornado Cash incident has sounded the alarm for all native privacy coins. Its mandatory, integrated privacy model often lacks flexibility when facing regulation. Ethereum's new blueprint, on the other hand, showcases a completely different wisdom.

Ethereum has chosen to become a powerful "privacy-enabled platform." It does not impose any specific privacy rules but rather provides underlying, Lego-like tools. This means that a DeFi project aimed at enterprise clients can utilize these tools to build a privacy solution that meets KYC/AML requirements and has a high degree of auditability; while a dApp focused on social privacy can construct another solution that emphasizes anonymity. This flexibility is the optimal response to the complex and ever-changing global regulatory environment.

Conclusion: A trump card to the mainstream world

In the post-Tornado Cash era, the crypto industry is forced to transition from the rebelliousness of adolescence to the prudence of adulthood. Ethereum's end-to-end privacy roadmap is precisely this mature answer. The "compliance privacy" ace it reveals is not a gimmick to stimulate the market in the short term, but a profound and fundamentally transformative approach focused on long-term development.

This card allows Ethereum to break away from the binary opposition of "anonymity" and "transparency," paving a middle path toward mass adoption. It announces to Wall Street's financial giants, multinational companies that value data sovereignty, and all ordinary users looking forward to a safer and freer digital future: a global settlement layer that combines the spirit of decentralization with the rules of the real world is becoming possible. This is not only Ethereum's winning path, but perhaps also the necessary route for the entire Web3 to reach the mainstream.