The Ethereum Foundation announced the appointment of new leadership for its Privacy Research Cluster, a move designed to better coordinate ongoing work on cryptography, private computation, and secure scaling solutions.

The cluster will oversee projects ranging from zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to multiparty computation, tools that help preserve user privacy while maintaining verifiability on Ethereum’s public blockchain, according to a post on the Ethereum Foundation blog.

The Privacy Cluster is part of the foundation’s broader research and development framework, which also includes scaling, security, and protocol sustainability. The new leads will focus on creating standards and shared infrastructure for privacy-preserving technologies.

Privacy has long been a contested area in Ethereum’s roadmap. While zero-knowledge research has already produced mainstream tools such as zkEVM rollups, their implementation raises regulatory and security questions.

US regulators have warned that privacy-preserving protocols may fall under enhanced scrutiny if they facilitate money laundering or obscure financial records. Ethereum’s foundation, however, has emphasized that advancing privacy is critical to user autonomy and censorship resistance.

This is a developing story.

This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor Jeffrey Albus before publication.

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