Fixing Privacy in Web3

Why Usable Privacy Is the Missing Layer in Web3

The foundational strengths of blockchains are self-custody and permissionless access. Users can hold assets without intermediaries, and anyone can interact with the network without needing approval. This is fundamentally different from traditional finance, where custody and access are controlled by centralized institutions.

However, another core property of public blockchains is radical transparency. Every transaction — sender, receiver, amount, contract call — is permanently visible on a public ledger. This transparency is great for verifiability and auditability, ensuring no single actor can cheat. But the same transparency creates a severe privacy deficit:

• Addresses are pseudonymous, not anonymous

• On-chain activity can be linked across apps

• Behavioral metadata (timing, gas, interaction patterns) can deanonymize users

• A single leak off-chain (KYC, exchange deposit) deanonymizes the entire wallet history

In many cases, public blockchains reveal more financial information than the traditional banking system ever would.

This visibility creates real risks for both individuals and organizations:

• Exposure of salary, savings, trading habits

• Business strategy leakage (treasury moves, partnership payments)

• Targeting by attackers or scammers

• Competitors tracking operational activity

And because transparency is structural rather than optional, it cannot be solved by UX or scaling improvements alone. No amount of throughput or latency reduction will make users comfortable with a system where their financial life is permanently public.

Why Privacy Must Be Usable

Most privacy systems today fail because they are:

• too complex,

• too hard to integrate,

• too easy to misuse,

• or too limited in what they can protect.

Users need privacy that works by default, not privacy that requires expertise, custom setups, or heavy ceremony. Developers need composable primitives they can integrate without becoming cryptographers.

Without usable privacy, mass adoption of Web3 financial infrastructure is impossible.

How Sanke + Kohaku Address This

Built on top of Kohaku, a privacy and security stack being developed under the Ethereum Foundation (with contributions from Vitalik Buterin and leading privacy engineers), Sanke brings usable privacy into the wallet layer by:

1. Local Verification

Transactions are validated inside the user’s device — eliminating the privacy leakage of centralized RPCs.

2. Private State Reads

Kohaku’s architecture enables private contract reads without revealing which data the user is accessing.

3. Per-app Identities

Each dApp receives a unique, unlinkable address — preventing cross-app tracking.

4. Compatibility With Privacy Protocols

Sanke connects to protocols like Privacy Pools for private deposits, transfers, and balances.

5. Zero-Knowledge Recovery

Users can recover accounts privately without exposing identity or relying on custodial intermediaries.

Unlike systems that require developers to hand-roll cryptography, Sanke provides these capabilities at the wallet layer — letting developers and users build privacy-preserving applications without needing to understand ZK internals.