Written by: On-Chain View

Many people do not understand what @VitalikButerin means by promoting Kohaku and donating 256 ETH. If you think it is just a charitable donation, you are gravely mistaken: behind this lies the evolution logic of "absolute privacy," "optional privacy," and "privacy is security" transparency models. Let's discuss:

1) What exactly is "absolute privacy"? What functions do Tornado Cash, Railgun, Aztec, and Monero serve? The core logic is to create a completely black-box "privacy pool." Once funds flow in, all transaction information, including sender, receiver, amount, etc., is encrypted, and nothing can be seen afterward, including by regulators!

This means that if dirty money and legitimate funds are mixed together in this privacy pipeline, it will inevitably lead to privacy tools being used for money laundering, which will result in regulatory sanctions. Therefore, for now, solutions that pursue absolute privacy can only remain at the tool service level; to attempt to scale, one must explore solutions that embrace regulation.

2) The time frame for "optional privacy" is very short. @Zcash adopts a dual-track system of transparent addresses and glowing addresses to explore a compromise solution. The core logic is segmentation, allowing users to choose actively, either using a fully glowing address, which can be likened to absolute privacy, or using a transparent address to meet regulatory needs.

This approach is certainly a step forward, adding a layer of intention to the tools. If the subject is an individual, they can choose absolute privacy; if the subject is a regulatory-compliant institution, the audit process will naturally opt for optional privacy.

However, the advancement of such solutions is not smooth. Because under the premise of having optional transparent privacy, using lightning addresses is akin to putting a label on oneself that says "there's no silver here," effectively stigmatizing privacy and making it a crime for a very few, rather than a standard for the masses.

3) The series of actions by Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation has one goal: to upgrade optional privacy to the standard feature of "privacy is security." This is what V has always emphasized: privacy is not a feature but a prerequisite for security!

This concept poses a challenge: how to ensure privacy while not being regulated? In other words, default privacy + optional disclosure = a decentralized solution for protecting privacy while complying with regulations.

Thus, the design of Kohaku follows the path of Stealth addresses + elliptic curve cryptography + ZK proofs, among other technical solutions, to achieve a balance between privacy protection and optional disclosure. Kohaku has established a standard privacy embedding layer that can directly serve wallets, promoting privacy through application layer habit migration.

But this is not enough. Vitalik is well aware of the significant challenges of privacy description in "off-chain environments." On-chain, there are many decentralized verification infrastructures and technologies like ZK and FHE to achieve balance, but protecting user metadata privacy off-chain and decentralized transmission layer messages has become a bottleneck issue.

Therefore, we proposed forwarding for @session_app and @SimpleXChat to explore how to achieve high-quality encrypted communication in a decentralized environment, thereby completing the full-process privacy pipeline both on-chain and off-chain.

The registration without a phone number for sessions, along with SimpleX's ability to remove even IDs, reinforces the fact that privacy (off-chain: IP addresses, communication partners, etc.; on-chain: transaction queues, transaction details, etc.) is part of the underlying security framework.

Thus, following Vitalik's directive, privacy can allow many technical narrative projects to thrive, including the universal ZK aggregation verification layer @boundless_xyz, the embeddable privacy trading layer @anoma, and the cryptographic holy grail-level FHE solution @zama, among others.

Do you understand now?

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