A Long-Awaited Feature Is Coming to Ethereum with an Update—It Will Address One of Cryptocurrencies’ Weaknesses

The EIP-8182 proposal, which aims to bring native privacy features to the network’s base layer within the Ethereum ecosystem, has reached a significant milestone.

Tom Lehman, the developer of the proposal, announced on the social media platform X that EIP-8182 has officially been given “Proposed for Adoption” (PFI) status for inclusion in the Hegotá hard fork, Ethereum’s next major update.

This development means the proposal has entered the official update process being evaluated by Ethereum core developers and is in a critical review phase before it can be added to the hard fork schedule.

EIP-8182 aims to offer on-demand, protocol-level native privacy transfers on the Ethereum network. Under the proposal, users will be able to transfer $ETH and ERC-20 tokens through a shielded pool system. A notable aspect of the system is that it requires no transaction fees or new protocol components. Instead of adding a new opcode, transaction type, or precompilation, the proposal will operate solely through a system contract that will be enabled during the hard fork.

According to developers, asset transfers on Ethereum are currently completely transparent. When users send $ETH or tokens, the recipient address, the amount sent, and the details of the transaction are all visible to everyone. However, privacy is a crucial need for financial activities such as payrolls, corporate treasury transactions, donations, and similar transactions.

The proposal noted that there is currently no widely adopted common privacy infrastructure on Ethereum. The main reason for this, it stated, is that the effectiveness of privacy solutions depends on the number of users and capital sharing the same pool. It was argued that privacy applications with small user bases cannot provide adequate protection, thus making the adoption of new solutions more difficult.

EIP-8182 aims to solve this problem by creating a common privacy layer managed by the Ethereum protocol. Under the proposal, the private transfer system can only be updated through Ethereum’s hard fork processes. This avoids centralized updates that could put user funds at risk, while also ensuring adaptation to future cryptographic developments.

In the system, transfer notes are linked to private ownership identifiers, while wallets will match recipients with these identifiers using off-chain methods. This allows applications to develop services on a common infrastructure without having to create and manage their own privacy pools.

Whether EIP-8182 will be included in the Hegotá hard fork will be determined in the coming period as a result of evaluations to be carried out by Ethereum core developers.

*This is not investment advice.