Ethereum’s biggest privacy problem isn’t transactions – it’s people. As Web3 grows, users rarely operate from a single wallet anymore.
Individuals split activity across multiple addresses for security and discretion. Institutions do the same to manage risk, permissions, and compliance. Yet blockchains were never designed to handle this reality gracefully. Today, coordinating across wallets usually means sacrificing privacy or relying on off-chain trust. A new Ethereum proposal, ERC-8092, is attempting to fix that foundational mismatch.
Key Takeaways
Ethereum is exploring a new standard to improve privacy across multiple wallets.
ERC-8092 would let users prove relationships between accounts without full disclosure.
The proposal aims to remove identity and privacy friction slowing Web3 adoption.
Instead of treating every address as an isolated actor, the proposal introduces a way to prove relationships between accounts without collapsing them into one public identity. The goal is not to make users more visible, but to give them control over when and how those connections are revealed.
This is a shift in how Ethereum thinks about identity itself.
The Hidden Friction Slowing Web3
Public blockchains excel at transparency, but that strength becomes a weakness at scale. For everyday users, managing multiple wallets is clumsy and error-prone. For institutions, it is often unworkable. Delegating authority, aggregating reputation, or proving legitimacy across accounts typically requires bespoke solutions or centralized intermediaries.
ERC-8092 proposes a common language for solving these problems. It allows accounts to signal that they are related – or acting on behalf of one another – in a way that can be verified cryptographically, without exposing unnecessary information to the public.
In practical terms, this could allow a user to keep personal, professional, and experimental wallets separate, while still proving ownership or authority when required.
Privacy as an Opt-In Feature, Not a Constraint
One of the most notable aspects of the proposal is flexibility. Rather than enforcing a single model, ERC-8092 allows users to decide where association data lives. Some may prefer onchain records for transparency and composability. Others may choose off-chain storage to reduce costs and preserve discretion.
The key point is choice. The standard does not dictate how visible a user must be. It creates the rails for privacy-aware coordination and lets participants decide how to use them.
This approach reflects a broader realization within Ethereum: mass adoption will not come from forcing users into one behavior, but from accommodating many.
Designed for a Multi-Chain World
ERC-8092 also looks beyond Ethereum’s own ecosystem. Modern users interact with Layer 2 networks, sidechains, and entirely different blockchains, often with incompatible cryptographic systems. Identity, however, does not stop at chain boundaries.
By leveraging existing address-representation standards, the proposal enables relationships to be expressed across heterogeneous networks. That means a user could prove control or delegation across chains without linking everything into a single, traceable profile.
As capital, applications, and users fragment across ecosystems, this kind of portable, privacy-preserving identity becomes increasingly critical.
Why This Matters Now
Interest in Web3 has not disappeared, but momentum has slowed. Privacy concerns, operational complexity, and institutional hesitation remain major obstacles. Ethereum’s community appears to recognize that scaling technology alone is not enough – social and identity layers must evolve as well.
For institutions exploring large-scale tokenization, address-level privacy is not optional. For individuals, sovereignty without usability is hollow. ERC-8092 sits at the intersection of those needs.
Whether the proposal is adopted or not, it signals a clear change in direction. Ethereum is no longer just asking how to make transactions faster or cheaper. It is asking how people and organizations can exist on-chain without giving everything away.
If Web3 is to reach billions, identity cannot be an accident of addresses. It has to be intentional – and ERC-8092 is one attempt to make that possible.
