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Private Transfers Engineering has just posted about some user research we did a while back amongst teams working in the private transfers space.
We asked what problems teams were facing, and what core protocol changes they would like to see.
Take a read below:
Thoughts on EIP-8182:
Having shared data structures for all privacy protocols would be a big win for privacy, since all protocols could share the same anonymity set! It's great to see a concrete proposal for privacy take shape.
The updated proposal is a lot cleaner without specifying the private rpc flow and reducing governance attack surfaces.
It has more limited compliance features than before, which makes sense without concrete compliance requirements. This could be changed in the future. I believe the basic model of having viewing keys does not meet the requirements for many compliance use-cases. User sovereignty should always be preserved, but if going in that direction, taking notes from Canton's selective disclosure is probably a good start.
Two big (and difficult) improvements for the proposal could be the following:
- Make it PQ secure from day 1: Users could use post-quantum signing methods, and notes are encrypted with PQ-secure ML-KEM-768. However, at the moment, the proof system in the outer circuit would need upgrading via hardfork to make it post-quantum. Why not solve this now to align with the Ethereum post-quantum roadmap?
- Solve state growth: I do think a prerequisite is to consider state growth, and likely have a mechanism to scale the state growth of nullifiers and commitments. ZCash is going down the route of something called oblivious synchronization, and allowing out-of-band payments. What path would Ethereum take?
Reminder: Ethereum is the most capitalist blockchain of them all.
xitter.cf/john_guilding/status/2…
The principles of CROPS are grounded in promoting self-sovereignty and enabling permissionless financial applications. If attempting to encode individualism and permissionless finance into the internet has anything to say about whether a technology is capitalist, Ethereum is the most capitalist of them all.
The full list of partners includes several Ethereum-based companies (@Nethermind, @Optimism).
The work of these companies is paramount to ensure Ethereum remains relevant in re-wiring the financial system. While at the same time, other organisations (i.e the EF) can apply resources in a more targeted fashion to maintain and promote the core USPs of blockchains.
If Ethereum ever fails to have a voice at the table, this would of course have to change.
Digital assets are entering a new phase. What once ran in parallel to existing financial systems is increasingly being applied to solve practical, real-world needs — often behind the scenes – from cross-border remittances to B2B money transfers. This creates new opportunities to add value in how money moves globally.
Today, we introduced the Mastercard Crypto Partner Program — a global initiative that brings together more than 85 crypto-native companies, payments providers, and financial institutions. Together, we're creating a forum for meaningful dialogue and collaboration as this space continues to mature.
Scaling to 8 billion people has always been the wrong goal in the context of agents.
The L2 roadmap gives Ethereum 10 million TPS.
2 orders of magnitude less than this.
LayerZero advertises 2 million TPS.
As things stand, all of these agents won't be able to live on a single chain.
Privacy at the L1 is now being discussed, but what designs and proposals should be considered? This is a very open question with no clear answers yet.
Introducing strawmap, a strawman roadmap by EF Protocol.
Believe in something. Believe in an Ethereum strawmap.
Who is this for?
The document, available at strawmap[.]org, is intended for advanced readers. It is a dense and technical resource primarily for researchers, developers, and participants in Ethereum governance. Visit ethereum[.]org/roadmap for more introductory material. Accessible explainers unpacking the strawmap will follow soon™.
What is the strawmap?
The strawmap is an invitation to view L1 protocol upgrades through a holistic lens. By placing proposals on a single visual it provides a unified perspective on Ethereum L1 ambitions. The time horizon spans years, extending beyond the immediate focus of All Core Devs (ACD) and forkcast[.]org which typically cover only the next couple of forks.
What are some of the highlights?
The strawmap features five simple north stars, presented as black boxes on the right:
→ fast L1: fast UX, via short slots and finality in seconds
→ gigagas L1: 1 gigagas/sec (10K TPS), via zkEVMs and real-time proving
→ teragas L2: 1 gigabyte/sec (10M TPS), via data availability sampling
→ post quantum L1: durable cryptography, via hash-based schemes
→ private L1: first-class privacy, via shielded ETH transfers
What is the origin story?
The strawman roadmap originated as a discussion starter at an EF workshop in Jan 2026, partly motivated by a desire to integrate lean Ethereum with shorter-term initiatives. Upgrade dependencies and fork constraints became particularly effective at surfacing valuable discussion topics. The strawman is now shared publicly in a spirit of proactive transparency and accelerationism.
Why the "strawmap" name?
"Strawmap" is a portmanteau of "strawman" and "roadmap". The strawman qualifier is deliberate for two reasons:
1. It acknowledges the limits of drafting a roadmap in a highly decentralized ecosystem. An "official" roadmap reflecting all Ethereum stakeholders is effectively impossible. Rough consensus is fundamentally an emergent, continuous, and inherent uncertain process.
2. It underscores the document's status as a work-in-progress. Although it originated within the EF Protocol cluster, there are competing views held among its 100 members, not to mention a rich diversity of non-EFer views.
The strawmap is not a prediction. It is an accelerationist coordination tool, sketching one reasonably coherent path among millions of possible outcomes.
What is the strawmap time frame?
The strawmap focuses on forks extending through the end of the decade. It outlines seven forks by 2029 based on a rough cadence of one fork every six months. While grounded in current expectations, these timelines should be treated with healthy skepticism. The current draft assumes human-first development. AI-driven development and formal verification could significantly compress schedules.
What do the letters on top represent?
The strawmap is organized as a timeline, with forks progressing from left to right. Consensus layer forks follow a star-based naming scheme with incrementing first letters: Altair, Bellatrix, Capella, Deneb, Electra, Fulu, etc. Upcoming forks such as Glamsterdam and Hegotá have finalized names. Other forks, like I* and J*, have placeholder names (with I* pronounced "I star").
What do the colors and arrows represent?
Upgrades are grouped into three color-coded horizontal layers: consensus (CL), data (DL), execution (EL). Dark boxes denote headliners (see below), grey boxes indicate offchain upgrades, and black boxes represent north stars. An explanatory legend appears at the bottom.
Within each layer, upgrades are further organized by theme and sub-theme. Arrows signal hard technical dependencies or natural upgrade progressions. Underlined text in boxes links to relevant EIPs and write-ups.
What are headliners?
Headliners are particularly prominent and ambitious upgrades. To maintain a fast fork cadence, the modern ACD process limits itself to one consensus and one execution headliner per fork. For example, in Glamsterdam, these headliners are ePBS and BALs, respectively.
(L* is an exceptional fork, displaying two headliners tied to the bigger lean consensus fork. Lean consensus landing in L* would be a fateful coincidence.)
Will the strawmap evolve?
Yes, the strawmap is a living and malleable document. It will evolve alongside community feedback, R&D advancements, and governance. Expect at least quarterly updates, with the latest revision date noted on the document.
Can I share feedback?
Yes, feedback is actively encouraged. The EF Protocol strawmap is maintained by the EF Architecture team: @adietrichs, @barnabemonnot, @fradamt, @drakefjustin. Each has open DMs and can be reached at first.name@ethereum[.]org. General inquiries can be sent to strawmap@ethereum[.]org.
While I'm unsure of the form factor for privacy changes at the L1, it's great to see such discussions happening now! Nice @dumbnamenumbers
What changes should be considered? Should the L1 even consider privacy?
Great read on Canton.
An important characteristic of Canton is that there is no universally shared ledger. Instead, many private ledgers are combined to form a "virtual global ledger".
Canton domains (private ledgers where each node operator maintains it's own private state) benefit from programmability and interoperability, but are structurally fragile from node operator outages. This threatens transaction atomicity between counterparties.
> If one participant in a shared contract goes offline, it can block certain ledger maintenance tasks for others:
From the Canton docs:
“An offline participant can prevent the pruning of contracts by its counter-participants.”
Not a problem for many institutions, but this requires trust in counterparties when sharing contracts. Domain operators also determine what information is available, so the network does not work without trust.
A decentralised blockchain does not have these settlement risks and if written well, applications can function without trust in counterparties.
Conclusion: It's obviously a good product since it is gaining traction, is built by institutions, and is built around real institutional problems. But it's not the future of finance if the future of finance needs instant, atomic global settlement with minimal trust assumptions on said settlement.
One important aspect I'm unsure on is if operators can run multiple nodes and thus decentralise their own private ledger. The article used singular language when referring to the "node" of a domain.
Even if domains could bootstrap their own node set, each private ledger would still have a minimal amount of decentralisation compared to a fully decentralised network—the secret sauce of actual blockchains.
Building apps on a dedicated network for privacy gives you some really valuable features for free:
1. Cryptographic building blocks: Notes, nullifiers, and proof generation can all be handled by the underlying network. Workload is reduced and codebase complexity significantly reduced.
2. Atomicity: Auth patterns where parties commit to execution allow for safe and expressive contract interactions. These succeed only if all authorised actions are complete.
3. Anonymity set size: All apps using the network share privacy features, such as the same note tree with Aztec. Therefore transactions from different apps can benefit from greater privacy.
4. Composability: Apps share a common network, so composing with different contracts and state becomes straightforward. E.g. Calling the USDC contract.
John retweeted
Ever wondered why we don't have private voting in DAOs?
Join MACI team, along with folks from @ShutterNetwork, @vocdoni , @EnclaveE3, @anticapture and @ENS_DAO to discuss what's holding adoption back!
X Space in 5 hours! 13:00 UTC
Join the discussion on this contradiction: if everyone says they love private voting, why haven't more DAOs adopted it?
Welcome all! Joining @bezzenberger @john_guilding @jordipainan @auryn_macmillan @alextnetto @5pence_eth
xitter.cf/i/spaces/1yoKMPwrVVlxQ
1. EIP-8141: Frame Transaction
2. ERC-6909: Minimal Multi-Token Interface
3. EIP-7928: Block-Level Access Lists
6909 is an ERC, so does not represent a protocol-level change. A protocol-level change would make Ethereum more opinionated as a platform, which would mark a departure from it's existing philosophy of being an unopinionated development platform.
#1 and #3 are cool. But #2 is less interesting to me, since a big benefit of the EVM ecosystem is that it is unopinionated in this sense when it comes to building apps. This leaves app-layer innovation strictly up to the apps.
Protocol-level token factories are interesting from a state growth perspective, since a large amount of state growth results from the same contracts getting deployed again and again.
xitter.cf/_Enoch/status/20184385…
I don't even think #2 is a good thing. I tremendously appreciate how limited the protocol is to execution concerns and application layer concerns like tokenization are left to the application layer.
This construction has a pretty neat fee model where transactions are paid from the yield of deposited tokens.
- Bridged funds are deposited into an ERC4626 vault where yield is accrued (E.g. via Aave)
- That yield is tracked and distributed per period to sequencers to pay for batching transactions and posting blobs
- Sequencers get more of the yield for more blob usage
- Users get free private payments
Nillion is migrating to Ethereum.
Mantle is migrating to Ethereum blobs for DA.
Far from the outdated and failing chain detractors have often suggested Ethereum is, momentum is instead building and accelerating. Projects are taking advantage of Ethereum's security and access to liquidity. The L2 scaling roadmap is working as expected.
Nillion is now on Ethereum.
$NIL holders can begin migrating their token from Cosmos to Nillion's L2 to participate.
Details below 🧵 👇
Synchronous cross-L2 composability is something we're currently aiming towards.
If privacy is a moat that leads to user lock-in, would L2s with native privacy features actually be bad for cross-L2 composability?
More privacy = good. But would these privacy moats actually undermine the vision of Ethereum as a unified ecosystem if they exist on L2s?
If the future is multi-chain and we want users to traverse across chains seamlessly, which is undoubtedly true on Ethereum, how do we do this bridging privately?
A similar issue exists with all privacy protocols where the anonymity set is limited to the set of users using the app.
Therefore, a bigger follow up question is how are we meant to interoperate between different dapps? Is it a winner-take-most dynamic such as a16z describe, where protocols dominate when they accumulate enough size and TVL.
When it come to privacy and anonymity sets, as eloquently explained in this article from @namada, size matters:
namada.net/blog/size-matters
So who's working on private bridging?
This is currently a knowledge gap for me. Recently came across @union_build who attempt to solve private cross-chain bridging with a model that takes inspiration from zkWormholes.
xitter.cf/union_build/status/199…
