The Ethereum Foundation has reinforced its commitment to privacy-first Ethereum wallets, framing default onchain privacy as a security necessity following a week of attacks and exploits. In an Oct. 26 post on X, the Foundation said privacy and security "can't be isolated goals," and that users can "worry less about an attacker utilizing your onchain history against you when privacy is a default."
The statement highlighted progress on Kohaku, an open-source software development kit designed to make shielded transactions easier to integrate into Ethereum wallets. Kohaku includes integrations with Railgun, Privacy Pools and Tornado Cash, offering wallet developers a standardized interface for shielded-pool protocols.
Jordan Enev's update described Ambire's months-long testing of Kohaku integrations across different privacy protocols, with feedback passed to the project's developers. He said the team is "closer than ever" to its first integration, though no public launch date has been announced.
At Devcon on Nov. 3, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Foundation researcher Nicolas Consigny are scheduled to demonstrate Kohaku on Ethereum mainnet using Ambire Wallet. The session is expected to cover privacy protocol integrations, light clients, post-quantum accounts and hardware wallet clear signing.
Kohaku's public repositories warn that some components remain works in progress and contain unaudited code. Its Railgun package is listed as under maintenance, and the browser wallet reference implementation currently supports the Sepolia testnet.
The privacy push builds on the Ethereum Foundation's October 2025 privacy commitment, which introduced Kohaku and a privacy cluster of 47 researchers. Related research includes proposals to let privacy pools pay network fees without a separate relayer, and post-quantum account protection estimated at $0.07 per account.
The U.S. Treasury removed economic sanctions against Tornado Cash in March 2025, while cautioning that it would continue monitoring transactions linked to North Korean cyber actors or money laundering risks.
