"Privacy is digital hygiene," Vitalik Buterin praised Ethereum after the banking data leak.

Customer data at major banks in America such as JPMorgan, Citi, and Morgan Stanley may have been compromised in a cyber attack on the mortgage technology provider SitusAMC. This incident prompted Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin to emphasize that privacy should be regarded as a fundamental act of “digital hygiene.”

The leak originated from unauthorized access to the SitusAMC system, the company confirmed on Saturday that a threat actor had stolen data related to several major financial institutions.

The leaked data includes “accounting records and legal agreements” as well as “some information related to our clients' customers.” The scope, nature, and extent of the leak are still under investigation, according to information from the company.

Buterin argues that privacy should be considered a fundamental digital hygiene rather than an optional feature.

“Privacy is not a feature. Privacy is hygiene,” Buterin responded on Twitter about the incident, as reported by The New York Times.

Ethereum and privacy

Buterin's reaction reflects the view he has emphasized many times this year, considering privacy as a fundamental requirement of the digital system rather than an addition.

In an April article, he proposed that Ethereum support anonymous addresses, selective disclosure, and zero-knowledge tools at the application level, in order to minimize the exposure of structured data as commonly seen in both traditional finance and public blockchains.

Shiv Shankar, CEO of Boundless – a decentralized marketplace specializing in zero-knowledge computation stated: “Calling privacy ‘hygiene’ is a useful reframing. Privacy should be seen similarly to patching a server or changing a key: it’s a habit, non-negotiable, and built into the infrastructure, not an add-on feature.”

In October, the Ethereum Foundation launched a research group focused on privacy and introduced Kohaku – a browser wallet and software development kit aimed at privacy, presented by Nicolas Consigny and Buterin at EFDevcon in Argentina.

Privacy: from principles to technology

This focus comes in the context of privacy, both as a principle and as a protective technology, which is gaining renewed attention on major blockchains.

• Ethereum develops tools at the protocol level along with layer-2 focusing on privacy.
• Bitcoin implements the Taproot upgrade and security wallet solutions.
• Solana focuses on Light Protocol after old projects like Elusiv come to an end.

Quinten van Welzen, head of strategy at Zano – a privacy-focused L1 blockchain – stated: “Default privacy ensures that everyone is protected by strong cryptographic mechanisms without needing to understand complex tools or make individual privacy decisions for each transaction.”

Cryptocurrencies like Zcash, which allow users to choose between transparent or completely anonymous transactions, are also attracting attention. Last week, a hedge fund company listed on Nasdaq purchased more ZEC, driving the stock price up by 469% over the past month.

From the very beginning, privacy has been a core principle in crypto, especially in relation to the traditional financial system.

“Banks must be trusted to hold and transfer our cryptocurrencies, but they lend in credit bubbles with reserves being just a fraction,” Satoshi Nakamoto – the founder of Bitcoin – wrote in 2009. “We have to trust them about privacy, trust that they won't let identity thieves drain our accounts.”

Thạch Sanh