Ethereum bots are burning over 50% of gas fees so ETH strangely needs privacy tech to fix it at scale
On some Ethereum L2s, bots now burn over half the fuel simply looking for MEV, they usually don’t pay proportionally for it. That’s a scaling and market-fairness drawback rooted in market construction.
The privateness dialog in crypto has lastly escaped the “nameless cash” framing that dominated the final cycle. In early 2026, the urgency is financial and rooted in instant monetary realities.
The business faces a structural drawback: on-chain transparency generates extractable worth at large scale, and that extraction has grown right into a scaling bottleneck relatively than remaining a purely philosophical concern.
Flashbots has documented how MEV-related “search spam” can eat greater than 50% of fuel on main layer 2s whereas paying a small share of charges. Alchemy, citing EigenPhi information, factors to almost $24 million in MEV profit extracted on Ethereum over simply 30 days, from Dec. 8, 2025, to Jan. 6, 2026.
When a hedge fund’s $10 million DEX swap is seen within the mempool earlier than it lands, slippage from sandwich assaults can dwarf fuel prices.
Privateness is not a characteristic request. It is a market equity drawback.
Reads, writes, proving
The Ethereum Basis’s Privateness and Scaling Explorations staff has standardized a three-part framework: personal writes, personal reads, and personal proving.
Personal reads relate to hiding transaction intent earlier than execution. Personal reads disguise which customers and apps are querying, similar to balances and positions. Personal proving is about making zero-knowledge proofs and attestations low-cost and transportable sufficient to embed in every single place.
Cais Manai, co-founder and CPO of TEN Protocol, argues probably the most pressing drawback is reads. He acknowledged that the business has spent years obsessing over hiding who despatched what to whom, the ‘write’ facet of privateness.
Nevertheless, he famous:
“The true hemorrhage proper now could be on the learn facet: the truth that each stability, each place, each liquidation threshold, each technique is sitting there in plaintext for anybody to examine. That is what powers MEV. That is what makes institutional DeFi a non-starter.”
Over 112,000 ETH, roughly $400 million at present costs, has been extracted from customers by sequencers and MEV bots feeding on the readable state, in response to TEN’s estimates.
The answer Manai advocates includes encrypting all the execution atmosphere utilizing Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). He defined:
“Contract state and logic keep encrypted whereas in use, not simply at relaxation. No one reads what they don’t seem to be alleged to, as a result of there’s nothing uncovered to learn.”
Tanisha Katara, founding father of Katara Consulting Group, sees “writes” as the most expensive drawback proper now.
In keeping with her:
“Learn privateness (RPC leakage, question patterns) is a slow-burning surveillance problem. Write privateness (front-running, sandwich assaults on institutional flows) is actively destroying worth in the present day. It is a whole bunch of thousands and thousands per yr being extracted from customers as a result of their transaction intent is seen earlier than execution. “
Andy Guzman, who leads the Ethereum Basis’s Privateness and Scaling Explorations staff, emphasizes that non-public reads are usually not broadly understood.
He elaborated additional:
“Personal Writes is the one which at the moment takes most consideration, it is the ‘first base’ and arguably the very first thing it’s important to do. Personal Proving is the enabler of the opposite two, and it has superior considerably lately. Nonetheless quite a bit to do.”
Ethereum personal writes because the wedge
Personal orderflow is a product.
Flashbots’ MEV-Share operates as an order-flow public sale by which customers and wallets selectively share transaction information to redistribute MEV. By default, 90% of extracted worth flows again to customers relatively than disappearing to bots.
Encrypted mempools characterize the subsequent layer. Shutter’s analysis paperwork a pathway that uses threshold encryption and timed key launch, built-in with proposer-builder separation.
Transactions enter the mempool encrypted and are decrypted solely after the order is dedicated, eliminating the general public mempool as an assault floor. The design acknowledges sensible constraints: latency overhead, reorg edge circumstances, and coordination challenges throughout validator units.
The financial stress is actual sufficient that main infrastructure suppliers are constructing MEV safety into default flows.
Alchemy’s MEV overview characterizes the issue as systemic, with documented revenue extraction totaling roughly $1 billion yearly throughout main chains.
| Layer | What’s uncovered in the present day | Financial hurt | What’s deploying now (examples) | Predominant bottleneck |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writes | Commerce intent pre-execution | Sandwiching / slippage | MEV-Share, personal orderflow, encrypted mempool analysis | Coordination + pockets defaults |
| Reads | Balances / positions / queries | Technique leakage / MEV gas | Personal RPC, stealth addresses (ERC-5564), TEEs / confidential execution | UX + developer UX |
| Proving | Privateness proofs portability/price | Deployment friction | zk tooling bettering (Ethproofs: ~5× latency ↓, ~15× price ↓) | Integration + product selections |
Silent leak changing into the subsequent Ethereum headline
The Ethereum privateness roadmap now explicitly elevates personal reads as a first-class monitor.
RPC privateness, which hides which addresses question which contracts, is vital as a result of question patterns expose methods. If a bot observes {that a} particular handle repeatedly checks a liquidation threshold, it is aware of the place is close to collapse.
Pockets-side privateness primitives are the place this will get sensible. Stealth addresses are formally standardized below ERC-5564, enabling recipient privateness by producing distinctive, unlinkable addresses for every cost.
The specification exists, however broad Ethereum pockets adoption stays hindered by UX challenges, together with scanning incoming funds, reconciling balances throughout ephemeral addresses, and the complexity of key administration.
Manai’s developer UX argument hits hardest right here:
“The true UX bottleneck in 2026 is developer UX, the hole between ‘I wish to construct a non-public utility’ and really with the ability to do it with out studying a completely new programming mannequin, a customized language, or a bespoke proving system.”
He highlighted the necessity for full EVM/SVMs operating inside TEEs so builders can construct encrypted dApps utilizing the identical instruments, languages, and psychological fashions they have already got. No circuits to put in writing, no customized VMs to be taught.
Proving is bettering quick sufficient
Zero-knowledge proving prices have collapsed. Ethproofs’ 2025 overview paperwork onboarding a number of zkVMs and provers, verifying roughly 200,000 blocks, and seeing latency fall roughly fivefold whereas prices dropped round fifteenfold over the yr.
Proof technology is not the first constraint on privateness deployment.
The Ethereum bottleneck has shifted to coordination and integration. Guzman identifies person expertise and value as the first obstacles for retail customers, and regulation and compliance as the first obstacles for establishments.
He stated:
“The most cost effective transaction you may ship on Ethereum is round 21,000 fuel, roughly $0.02. A non-public switch can simply be 420,000 fuel or extra. In durations of low exercise, it is okay (round $0.40), however excessive exercise may grow to be pricey for some use circumstances.”
Katara frames it as a coordination drawback:
“Proof price was the bottleneck in 2023-24. It is resolving. The coordination drawback is the bottleneck: Who decides that shielded sends are on by default in a pockets? Who governs the important thing server threshold in an encrypted mempool? These are the unsexy mechanism design issues that decide whether or not privateness truly reaches customers.”
Regulation is shaping and directing the Ethereum design house
Privateness builders are designing within the shadow of compliance necessities and authorized threat.
The US Treasury delisted Twister Money sanctions in 2025, however authorized uncertainty did not vanish. Twister Money developer Roman Storm confronted a blended verdict: responsible on an unlicensed money-transmitting enterprise cost, with the jury deadlocked or acquitted on different counts.
On the compliance facet, the EU’s crypto journey rule regime below Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 took impact on Dec. 30, 2024, requiring the gathering and transmission of identities for crypto-asset transfers.
Privateness is not disappearing, however being productized into kinds that may survive regulation: selective disclosure, coverage controls, auditability home windows.
Everlasting opacity scares regulators. Privateness that is auditable on a schedule is one thing they will work with.
Katara notes the irony:
“Permissioned and enterprise chains might ship default privateness to institutional customers earlier than public chains ship it to retail.”
What minimal viable privateness appears like in 2026
For the typical MetaMask person in 2026, Katara expects one-address-per-application to grow to be extra frequent, non-obligatory shielded sends in a couple of wallets, and early RPC privateness options.
Guzman factors to stealth addresses and shielded swimming pools as already sensible, with UI bettering quickly:
“I believe we’re going to see extra L2s specializing in funds and personal transfers.”
Manai is extra pessimistic about defaults on most chains. He acknowledged:
“Actually? Near nothing. The typical person in 2026 continues to be broadcasting each swap, each stability test, each approval in plaintext. The minimal viable privateness needs to be: your balances aren’t public, your commerce intent is not seen earlier than execution, and you are not dropping worth to front-runners.”
Three paths ahead
The primary state of affairs is that MEV makes privateness unavoidable.
Wallets and apps proceed to combine personal transaction pathways, similar to personal RPC, MEV-Share-style routing, and per-app addressing. The set off is sustained MEV extraction plus extra institutional capital transferring on-chain.
The second state of affairs is confidential execution goes enterprise-first. TEEs and policy-based encryption achieve traction in managed environments, similar to establishments, regulated apps, and personal markets, as a result of they prioritize enterprise confidentiality over client anonymity.
The third state of affairs is that regulatory chill pushes privateness to an opt-in-only mannequin. If enforcement focuses broadly on privateness tooling, retail privateness UX stays area of interest. Groups shift to selective disclosure and “coverage privateness” designs, similar to Privateness Swimming pools, relatively than generalized shielding.
Privateness in 2026 is not a characteristic. It is a response to structural issues that grew to become too costly to disregard.
Ethereum MEV extraction, technique leakage, and on-chain surveillance create quantifiable losses at an institutional scale. The expertise to deal with these issues exists: encrypted mempools, stealth addresses, confidential execution environments, and zero-knowledge proving with collapsed prices.
The barrier is not cryptography anymore. It is coordination, developer UX, and the unsexy work of constructing privateness the default relatively than opt-in.
The business spent the final cycle constructing privateness as an exception. The following cycle will decide whether or not privateness turns into infrastructure (boring, invisible, and in every single place) or stays a distinct segment characteristic for the paranoid and the institutional.
The distinction comes down as to if the individuals constructing wallets, apps, and protocols determine that leaking every thing by default is a bug value fixing. In 2026, the economists lastly counsel it is a bug.
