Institutional privacy
Institutions do not adopt public rails without two properties that pull against each other: confidentiality (who may see what) and auditability (prove what happened). My working frame for this is doors and roads — privacy creates the rooms; interoperability makes them a market. This page collects the thread.
The frame §
A market made only of private rooms does not function. It needs roads: value, instructions, and proofs moving between institutions without everyone operating inside one environment. Privacy without interoperability re-creates the silos onchain; interoperability without privacy is transparency nobody with real positions accepts. A policy layer over standard JSON-RPC can preserve existing application interfaces. The network’s data visibility and the trust placed in its operators still need separate controls.
The thread §
- Private doors and interoperable roads Aug 2026 — the frame, stated after the Privacy Podcast conversation.
- Practical privacy for institutional EVM networks Sep 2026 — a written companion to the privacy talks: access boundaries, operator trust, audit evidence, and an example of moving value between institutions.
- Privacy from operators WIP — the next question: which parties can see the data, and what would it take to keep it private from them?
- Open Privacy Suite — the built form: identity-aware policy, selective disclosure, audit evidence over standard JSON-RPC. What I spend most of my time on at Gateway.fm.
- Practical Privacy — DAppCon 2026 Jun 2026 and the LF Decentralized Trust workshop Mar 2026 — the argument in talk form: privacy is not one problem, and the architecture should not pretend it is.
- Privacy, Ethereum, and the Future of On-Chain Finance Aug 2026 — the podcast conversation: architectures beyond permissioned chains, ZK, the risk of rebuilding silos on new rails.
- ReGenesis Explained 2020 — the early ancestor: who ends up holding the state decides who holds the power.
Open questions §
The questions I am actively holding are on Now: privacy from operators, what auditors need to see and prove, how many vendor layers one counterparty can responsibly absorb, and keeping personal notes under their author’s control. Disagree usefully: igor@ffconsulting.org.