Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has proposed a new “stealth address” system for Ethereum that would dramatically improve and simplify the workflow for achieving privacy for ordinary users.
According to a blog post published by Buterin over the weekend and titled An incomplete guide to stealth addresses, the proposed system would bring the same privacy properties as generating new addresses for each transaction someone receives.
The only difference would be that this would happen without any work needed for the receiver.
Privacy remains a large challenge on Ethereum
In the blog post, Buterin admitted that privacy – or the lack thereof – is a large problem for Ethereum users, saying:
“One of the largest remaining challenges in the Ethereum ecosystem is privacy. By default, anything that goes onto a public blockchain is public […] In practice, using the entire suite of Ethereum applications involves making a significant portion of your life public for anyone to see and analyze.”
He added that…
