Balaji Srinivasan Reveals Bold Idea for Ethereum Revolution

Srinivasan suggested that Zethereum would function as a “newly legal Tornado Cash,” referencing the recent court ruling that deemed the Ethereum-based privacy

Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan has proposed a bold new concept called “Zethereum,” which he believes has the potential to revolutionize Ethereum by adding advanced privacy features. In a recent discussion on X, Srinivasan shared his ideas on how a pseudonymous developer, referred to as “Zatoshi,” could achieve this through smart contracts that incorporate zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. While the concept draws inspiration from Bitcoin's Satoshi, Srinivasan highlighted how the network dynamics will differ significantly.

Balaji Srinivasan Outlines Ambitious Plan to Integrate ZK Privacy into Ethereum

In his proposal, Srinivasan suggests that Zethereum would essentially function as a “newly legal Tornado Cash,” following a recent court ruling that deemed the Ethereum-based privacy tool not unlawful. Describing Zethereum as the “APIs for all the zero-knowledge (ZK) innovation over the last few years,” he argues that implementing ZK privacy as smart contracts, rather than at the base layer, would enable rapid deployment while minimizing risks for the Ethereum network.

“It would be a way to ship much of Justin Drake’s impressive five-year ZK roadmap in three months,” adds Srinivasan, highlighting the potential speed of innovation and adoption with this approach.

ZATOSHI AND ZETHEREUM Here’s a bold plan for how one brave engineer could strike a blow for internet freedom while bringing Ethereum all the way back: they just need to go Zatoshi and build Zethereum.

Anyone who wants to build a Zethereum should still go Zatoshi to do it: meaning full anon, with perfect opsec.

Pardons for Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev would affirm privacy rights.

— Balaji (@balajis) November 29, 2024

Highlighting the potential risks involved in such an endeavor, Srinivasan emphasizes the need for anonymity on the part of the developer undertaking this task. “Anyone who wants to build a Zethereum should still go Zatoshi to do it: meaning full anon, with perfect opsec,” he notes, also calling for pardons for Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, developers linked to Tornado Cash, to affirm privacy rights.

When asked about the possibility of integrating Zethereum with other blockchains, such as Bitcoin, Solana, or Base, to further enhance privacy, Srinivasan provides a nuanced perspective, explaining why each blockchain may or may not be suitable for the task at hand.

“Why not Bitcoin? The base layer is essentially immutable at this point,” he begins, referring to Bitcoin. “And the BTC community is more focused on political innovation than technical innovation.” Moving on to Solana and Base, he adds, “Non-anon dev teams make them less suited for a privacy project.”

Despite acknowledging the existence of other privacy and ZK scaling projects, such as Zcash and ZKsync, Srinivasan highlights Ethereum’s distribution as being crucial for mainstream adoption. “Adding easy privacy to Ethereum would mainstream Zcash’s ideas,” he argues.

In his concluding remarks, Srinivasan positions the idea of Zethereum as being particularly timely in light of recent legal and political developments, adding, “If Tornado Cash is legal, you could first anonymously enable any Ethereum wallet to send Zcash-grade private transactions,” before outlining a roadmap for integrating ZK innovations into Ether.