Zero-knowledge proofs replace shared observation with shared verification, enabling accountability without revealing sensitive information. Regulators must embrace privacy as infrastructure.
Opinion by: Agata Ferreira, assistant professor at the Warsaw University of Technology
A new consensus is forming across the Web3 world. For years, privacy was treated as a compliance problem, liability for developers and at best, a niche concern. Now it is becoming clear that privacy is actually what digital freedom is built on.
The Ethereum Foundation’s announcement of the Privacy Cluster — a cross-team effort focused on private reads and writes, confidential identities and zero-knowledge proofs — is a sign of a philosophical redefinition of what trust, consensus and truth mean in the digital age and a more profound realization that privacy must be built into infrastructure.
