Ethereum developers have unveiled Kohaku, an ambitious new roadmap aimed at significantly enhancing wallet privacy and security within the ecosystem. Announced in a blog post by Ethereum Foundation coordinator Nicolas Consigny, Kohaku is designed as a modular framework for developers and advanced users, laying the groundwork for a set of crucial privacy and security primitives.
At its core, the project will deliver a Software Development Kit (SDK) for building robust wallet functions, along with a reference wallet to demonstrate the tools in action. The initial version will be a browser extension based on the Ambire wallet, offering advanced users greater control over their privacy.
This open-source endeavor is a collaborative effort, involving prominent teams like Ambire, Railgun, DeFi Wonderland, Helios, and Oblivious Labs, with an open invitation for broader community contributions via its GitHub repositories.
A primary objective of Kohaku is to drastically reduce the dependence of wallets on centralized services that are capable of tracking transactions. To achieve this, the project will implement features such as private sending and receiving, mechanisms to hide users’ IP addresses, the creation of separate accounts for each decentralized application (DApp), and P2P transaction broadcasting that bypasses standard Remote Procedure Call (RPC) servers.
Furthermore, Kohaku plans to integrate sophisticated social recovery options that prioritize privacy. This includes utilizing tools like ZK Email, which employs zero-knowledge proofs for anonymous email verification, and Anon Aadhaar, which allows users to prove their identity in a privacy-preserving manner.
Looking to the future, the development team intends to move wallet security even closer to the device level, coining the vision “as close as possible to the silicon.” This ultimate goal involves creating a native Ethereum browser, a secure environment where users can interact safely with DApps, IPFS content, and decentralized networks without data leaks.
Kohaku’s launch coincides with a broader, coordinated push by the Ethereum Foundation on privacy, highlighted by the formation of a new initiative called the Privacy Cluster. This group, launched recently, unites 47 leading researchers, engineers, and cryptographers dedicated to developing protocol-level privacy features for the Ethereum network.
Working in tandem with the Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) team, the Privacy Cluster will focus on introducing tools like private payments, confidential identity systems, and zero-knowledge infrastructure to protect user data directly on Ethereum’s Layer-1 blockchain.
The Cluster encompasses multiple Ethereum Foundation and PSE initiatives, with Kohaku as a key component. Other notable projects within this new organizational structure include Private Reads & Writes, Private Proving, and Private Identities, signaling a comprehensive and unified commitment to user privacy across the Ethereum ecosystem.
~Rushen Wickramaratne
