Buterin Backs Project to Anonymize All Ethereum Users

Ethereum Foundation researchers develop a new protocol layer called Kohaku to bake privacy directly into user wallets. The project seeks to normalize end-to-end encrypted transactions by removing the technical barriers that previously relegated shielded pools to a niche group of advanced users.

Kassandra, a core contributor to the Kohaku Initiative inside the Ethereum Foundation, provided a public progress report this week. She identified the mission as frontier research and development on the “Access Layer” of the network. The initiative focused on ensuring that basic privacy became the norm for every user of the Ethereum chain. The project team developed a Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow wallet developers to embed shielded pool protocols like Tornado Cash, Railgun, and Privacy Pools in a seamless, intermediary-free manner.

The technical update arrived as the Foundation moved to prioritize practical implementations over theoretical research. “Kohaku was created in a new era with a focus on bringing real privacy to real users in the real world ASAP. Our goal is not ‘experiments’ — our goal is more private txs on eth NOW,” Kassandra said. The contributor emphasized that while privacy protocols existed for years, their complexity prevented mass adoption. The Kohaku SDK aimed to abstract away these hurdles for both builders and end users.

A primary technical milestone involved the use of EIP-7702 and the 4337 mempool. The Kohaku team used these tools to enable a relaying path for private transactions that did not rely on protocol-specific infrastructure. Historically, private transactions required “relayers” that created centralization risks and additional points of trust. The new architecture allowed all privacy protocol transactions to move through a standard, decentralized mempool. Kassandra characterized this as a major win for the “Censorship Resistance, Openness, Privacy, and Security” (CROPS) focus of the Foundation.

The development reached an early alpha stage with operational 4337 relaying for the Railgun protocol. Work on Tornado Cash and Privacy Pools integrations proceeded alongside the creation of an experimental browser extension wallet. Kassandra also released a command-line interface (CLI) wallet to demonstrate the immediate utility of the SDK. “I’ve been coding up a CLI based wallet that consumes the kohaku sdk… for now it’s a pet project,” she noted while sharing the GitHub repository. Production-grade wallets, including Ambire, began preparations to integrate the new privacy features.

Ethereum co-founder Buterin publicly endorsed the project, noting that the team had been working on the initiative for nearly a year. “Kohaku’s goal is to make two twin properties: Security (and trustlessness) [and] Privacy (read and write) a reality on the access layer. Security and privacy on Ethereum must be normal,” Buterin shared. 

The push for integrated privacy occurred during a period of heightened global regulatory scrutiny regarding blockchain transparency. By embedding these tools directly into the wallet experience, the Foundation positioned privacy as a fundamental human right within the digital economy. The Kohaku initiative represented a departure from the “opt-in” model of the past, moving instead toward a future where every transaction carried a baseline of cryptographic protection.

Chain Street’s Take

Kohaku represents the most aggressive move yet to make Ethereum an adversarial environment for mass surveillance. By stripping away the need for specialized relayers and embedding shielded pools into the wallet SDK, the Foundation is essentially daring regulators to target the entire “Access Layer” rather than a few isolated protocols. The transition from “experiment” to “real-world privacy now” confirms that the EF views the current window for preserving financial sovereignty as narrow. For the ecosystem, the success of Kohaku will be the ultimate test of whether Ethereum can scale its privacy as effectively as it has scaled its throughput.