Vitalik Buterin published a 4,000-word blog post on Tuesday urging developers to prioritize wallet privacy and security. The 30-year-old creator of Ethereum underscored the importance of wallets as the critical interface between users and the Ethereum blockchain.
“A user only benefits from any decentralization, censorship resistance, security, privacy, or other properties that Ethereum and its applications offer to the extent that the wallet itself also has these properties,” Buterin wrote.
He outlined a wide range of potential wallet enhancements – from privacy improvements like communication of transaction details via the Waku secure communication protocol, to advances in account security that leverage ZK-SNARK technology to minimize malicious hacks in products like zkemail and Myna Wallet among others.
According to Buterin, Myna, zkemail, and similar products use ZK-wrapped centralized IDs that essentially convert traditional corporate or government IDs into Ethereum addresses that can send transactions. ZK-SNARK technology is used to prove possession of the traditional IDs in question.
Buterin stressed that his ideas can be implemented with current infrastructure, evidenced by the examples he included with each suggestion. He also emphasized that his wish list is not exhaustive.
“The goal of this post is to give my own views of some of the properties that an ideal Ethereum wallet would have,” wrote Buterin. “This is not intended to be a complete list.”
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong chimed in on X, hinting at the possibility of incorporating some of Buterin’s musings into his company’s wallet.
“I agree, social recovery is a good idea, surprised we haven’t made more progress on it,” Armstrong wrote. “Will dig in with the Coinbase Wallet team.”
Social recovery refers to the practice of using guardians – trusted family members, friends, institutions, or even devices and passkeys – for better private key management.
An example would be a multisig wallet that requires a majority of the guardian group to sign and move funds.
Much like Coinbase, decentralized exchange Uniswap also posted that it would be implementing some of Buterin’s suggestions.
Beyond practical improvements implementable today, Buterin predicted longer term approaches that include artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and active defense systems that proactively thwart malicious attacks.
“These more radical ideas depend on technology that is extremely immature today,” Buterin wrote. “I would not put my assets today into a wallet that relies on them.”
