Vitalik Buterin reacted to the latest data exposure scare around JPMorgan, Citi and Morgan Stanley with a short message that immediately turned into the focal point: "Privacy is not a feature. Privacy is hygiene."
The banks were notified by SitusAMC that client information may have been accessed, and the timing made his comment look less like a general remark and more like a direct response to how traditional finance keeps handling user data.
This comes only days after Buterin presented Kohaku, a new privacy and security toolkit for the Ethereum ecosystem awaited in the near future. The idea behind Kohaku is simple: wallets and applications should not depend on optional add-ons to achieve normal confidentiality.
During the demo, Kohaku used Railgun to hide publicly visible funds with a single action, showing how the privacy baseline can look if the stack is built around it rather than patched later.
Ethereum and privacy
The week around Ethereum has been filled with privacy and governance concerns. At Devconnect, Buterin warned that Wall Street’s growing influence creates two pressure points for the network: the possible exit of core developers and attempts by large holders to push protocol adjustments that fit their business constraints.
For Buterin, institutions already have their own high-speed infrastructure and are not looking for a network tuned to their internal throughput. What matters is Ethereum’s ability to stay global, neutral and outside the logic of corporate control.
With this in mind, the bank leak alert is just another example of how centralized storage keeps creating risk. Buterin's message is pretty straightforward: privacy should be standard, not something marketed as an extra feature.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team