Ethereum's 2026 Roadmap to Address Privacy and Data Challenges

According to Foresight News, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced plans to systematically address privacy and data issues by 2026. The strategy includes utilizing ZK-EVM and BAL to lower the barrier for running full nodes, and employing Helios to verify the authenticity of RPC return data. Additionally, ORAM and PIR technologies will be used to request data from RPC without revealing specific content. The roadmap also aims to promote social recovery wallets and time locks to mitigate the risk of fund loss after private key exposure. Privacy payments that align with the experience of regular transactions are also part of the plan. Enhancements in privacy and censorship resistance will be pursued under ERC-4337, future native account abstraction, and FOCIL. Furthermore, the initiative seeks to advance on-chain application interfaces based on IPFS to reduce reliance on centralized servers.