What is Vitalik's intention in promoting Kohaku and donating 256 ETH?

Vitalik promotes Kohaku and donates 256 ETH, involving the evolutionary logic of three modes: “absolute privacy,” “optional privacy,” and “privacy is security,” aiming to upgrade privacy from an optional feature to a prerequisite for blockchain security. (Background: Vitalik warns that Ethereum's Gas limit will increase fivefold by 2026, but inefficient operations will be penalized five times!) (Supplementary background: Vitalik signs the “Trustless Declaration,” how account abstraction rewrites private key, security, and on-chain experience) Many people do not understand what @VitalikButerin's intention is in promoting Kohaku and donating 256 ETH. If you think it's just a charity donation, you are very mistaken: behind this involves the evolutionary logic of “absolute privacy,” “optional privacy,” and “privacy is security.” Let's discuss: 1) Absolute Privacy Mode “Absolute privacy” is the functionality originally possessed by Tornado Cash, Railgun, Aztec, and Monero, with the core logic of creating a completely black-box “privacy pool.” Once funds enter, all transaction information, including sender, receiver, amount, etc., is encrypted, and the outside world cannot see anything, including regulators! This means that if black money and legal funds mix in this privacy pipeline, it will lead to privacy tools becoming money laundering tools, thus subject to regulatory sanctions. Therefore, as it stands, the absolute privacy solution can only remain at the tool service level; to scale up, it must explore embracing regulatory solutions; 2) Optional Privacy Mode “Optional privacy” is a compromise solution that @Zcash has explored recently using a dual-track system of transparent addresses + shielded addresses. The core logic is to allow users to actively choose, either using fully shielded addresses, which can be likened to absolute privacy, or using transparent addresses to meet regulatory needs. This is indeed progress, essentially adding an intention layer above the tools; if the subject is an individual, they can choose absolute privacy, while if the subject is a regulatory-compliant institution, they naturally choose optional privacy with auditing processes. However, advancing such solutions is not easy, as using a shielded address under the premise of optional transparent privacy is tantamount to self-labeling as “there is no silver here,” stigmatizing privacy and making it a privilege for a few rather than a standard for the masses; 3) Privacy is Security Mode The series of actions by Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation have one goal: to upgrade optional privacy to a standard feature of “privacy is security,” which is what V has always emphasized, Privacy is not a feature, it’s a prerequisite for security! This concept poses a challenge: how to ensure privacy while avoiding regulatory scrutiny? In other words, default privacy + optional disclosure = the implementation of decentralized privacy protection and regulatory compliance solutions; Therefore, Kohaku's design follows the path of Stealth addresses + elliptic curve cryptography techniques + ZK proofs, etc., balancing privacy protection and optional disclosure through technical means. Kohaku is more like a modular privacy embedding layer that can directly serve wallets, spreading privacy through application layer habit migration; However, this is not enough. Vitalik clearly understands that the significant challenge of the privacy narrative lies in the “off-chain environment” because there are many decentralized verification infrastructures and ZK, FHE, etc., technologies on-chain to achieve balance, but protecting user metadata privacy off-chain and decentralized messaging layers becomes a bottleneck issue. Hence, the donations to @session_app and @SimpleXChat are actually aimed at exploring how to achieve end-to-end encrypted communication in decentralized environments, thereby completing the full-process privacy pipeline on-chain + off-chain; Session's no phone number registration, combined with SimpleX's capability to remove IDs, reinforces a fact that privacy (off-chain: IP address, communication counterpart, etc.; on-chain: transaction links, interaction details, etc.) is part of the underlying security framework. Therefore, following Vitalik's directive, the privacy track can allow many technical narrative projects to latch onto the bandwagon, including universal ZK aggregation verification layer @boundless_xyz, as well as the intent-embedded optional privacy transaction layer @anoma, and cryptographic holy grail-level FHE solutions @zama, etc. Related reports Vitalik questions X platform's privacy policy: forcing the disclosure of user country/region has undermined the anonymity of the crypto community. Vitalik: The prediction market should adopt “decentralized oracle machines” + multiple decision-making mechanisms to avoid malicious manipulation. This article titled “What is Vitalik's intention in promoting Kohaku and donating 256 ETH?” was first published in BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.