In the ever-evolving landscape of blockchain and decentralization, privacy has reemerged as the defining conversation of our digital era. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, has recently advanced one of his most forceful arguments yet that privacy as not only a fundamental right but also an indispensable foundation for meaningful progress in Web3. For Vitalik, a world without privacy is one where individuals cannot freely transact, create, or express themselves without fear of surveillance or exploitation.
This conviction resonates deeply with the ethos of decentralization. Web3 was conceived as a movement toward ownership and autonomy, yet the reality remains that most blockchain activity today is publicly accessible, exposing user data, behaviours, and financial trails in ways that are incompatible with the concept of true freedom.
COTI’s CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen puts it succinctly, “Privacy isn’t just a feature, it’s the precondition for freedom, innovation, and real adoption in Web3. At COTI, we’re turning that principle into infrastructure. By making programmable privacy scalable and practical today, we’re helping Ethereum and the broader ecosystem move from ideals to impact.”
Bridging the gap between transparency and confidentiality has become the grand challenge of the next chapter in Web3’s evolution.
How Is Ethereum Advancing Wallet-Level Privacy with Kohaku?
Ethereum’s research into privacy-preserving technologies has gained tangible momentum in projects like Kohaku, announced earlier this week at Devconnect Argentina. Kohaku is a privacy‑first wallet toolkit and software development kit (SDK) initiated by the Ethereum Foundation that encourages builders to adopt privacy-preserving features.
Kohaku and similar initiatives demonstrate that privacy need not come at the cost of security or compliance. They are part of a growing movement that understands privacy as empowerment, allowing communities and economies to function freely while anchoring all activity in cryptographic integrity.
What Makes COTI’s Approach to Privacy Different?
While Ethereum paves the way for wallet privacy, COTI has already integrated with MetaMask and has live infrastructure for building privacy into all manner of real-world applications. As a privacy-first Ethereum Layer 2, COTI has pioneered the first-ever blockchain implementation of Garbled Circuits, a cryptographic breakthrough theorized in the 1980s but only now realized at production scale.
COTI’s Garbled Circuits approach offers a distinct performance profile in the privacy landscape: up to 3000x faster than Fully Homomorphic Encryption and 250x lighter than alternative privacy solutions. This isn’t just incremental improvement, it’s the unlock that makes privacy practically deployable across enterprise applications. COTI’s unique technology enables multi-party computation without revealing private data, all while remaining fully EVM-compatible.
Where solutions face tradeoffs between performance and confidentiality, COTI’s architecture can deliver on both making it adoption-ready for a wide range of use cases in finance, healthcare, identity management, and the creative layers of Web3.
Where Can Programmable Privacy Have Real Impact?
Confidential DeFi, to hide bidding, leverage positions, trade size, or strategy until settlement, reducing front‑running and data leakage.
Real‑World Assets, allowing high‑value assets to be tokenized while protecting ownership and valuation details.
Identity systems, to mute personal data by default and reveal only what is legally required.
Enterprises, to shield payment amounts or customer identities while still enabling audits where needed.
Payments / Wallets: Private transfers, payroll, merchant and B2B payments that protect sensitive commercial terms, Institutional wallets with audit-friendly controls
AI systems use encrypted data and produce private results, letting companies apply AI on sensitive information without exposing it.
Each of these scenarios reframes digital privacy not as a luxury, but as a condition for genuine freedom. COTI’s contribution is instrumental in achieving this transformation.
Why Is COTI Essential to Ethereum’s Privacy Future?
The privacy renaissance represents more than a technological shift, it is a renewal of Web3’s founding philosophy that seeks the digital liberty of decentralization. COTI stands at the forefront of this evolution, not merely as a technology provider, but as core infrastructure and enabler.
As the ecosystem matures, different privacy solutions will serve complementary needs across various use cases. COTI’s unique combination of speed, lightweight computation, and enterprise-grade compliance positions it to unlock applications that require all three, from trade finance to healthcare to confidential social platforms.
Through its pursuit of practical, scalable privacy infrastructure, COTI transforms Web3’s most profound aspiration into reality: a free, secure, and equitable digital future, one in which privacy is not an afterthought, but the very essence of human and technological progress.
About COTI
COTI is the programmable privacy layer for Web3.
Powered by high-performance Garbled Circuits, COTI brings fast, low cost, flexible, and compliant privacy to any blockchain. With privacy that’s programmable by design, COTI enables the next generation of DeFi, payments, identity, governance, and AI.
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