Vitalik Buterin Unveils Kohaku to Fix Ethereum Wallet Privacy
Vitalik Buterin has introduced Kohaku, a new Ethereum Foundation initiative designed to solve one of the ecosystem’s biggest long-standing issues — the difficulty of using privacy tools in everyday wallet interactions.
Ethereum’s Privacy Tools Have Grown Powerful — But Not Usable
Over the past decade, the Ethereum ecosystem has built a strong technical foundation for privacy. Protocols such as Tornado Cash and Railgun enable anonymous transactions via shielded pools, and modern ZK-proof systems now produce proofs in seconds rather than minutes.
Yet, despite this progress, user experience remains a major obstacle. Private transactions often require separate seed phrases, separate wallets, no multisig support for shielded funds, and multiple manual steps for every operation. Public broadcast mechanisms still fail frequently, driving users back toward centralized exchanges simply because they are easier to use.
What Kohaku Aims to Change
Kohaku, launched as an open-source initiative in October 2025, introduces two major components intended to standardize and simplify privacy for both developers and end-users:
• A developer-oriented SDK containing essential privacy and security primitives
• A reference wallet built in collaboration with Ambire as a browser extension
The goal is to make privacy a default expectation rather than a niche feature reserved for technical experts.
Key Features of the Kohaku Stack
The project includes several advanced capabilities that go far beyond today’s standard wallet functionality. Notable features include:
• Local transaction verification without relying on external servers
• IP-masked private transfers
• A separate privacy account for each DApp to avoid leaking one’s full activity history
• Social recovery mechanisms powered by zero-knowledge proofs
• Early support for post-quantum cryptographic primitives
These components collectively aim to bring secure and frictionless privacy to mainstream Ethereum users, without compromising decentralization or usability.
A Broad Collaboration Across the Ethereum Ecosystem
Kohaku is being developed jointly by Ambire, Railgun, DeFi Wonderland, and the Ethereum Foundation’s Privacy Cluster — a group of more than forty researchers working to advance privacy-forward infrastructure for the network.
The full codebase is already available on GitHub and open to contributors worldwide, signaling the project’s long-term ambition to become the standard toolkit for private on-chain activity.
With Kohaku, Buterin and the Ethereum community aim to turn privacy from a complex challenge into a seamless part of everyday blockchain interactions.
Editorial Team — CoinBotLab