The post Decentralized Identity in 2025 and the Next Phase of Privacy appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

For years, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has advocated for privacy in the crypto space. Buterin argues that onboarding users alone is not enough, cautioning that widespread use of “walled gardens” would undermine the core purpose of decentralized systems. “The goal is not to onboard people to Ethereum. The goal is to onboard people to openness and self-sovereignty,” he recently wrote on a X post. Source: Vitalik Buterin Buterin is one of crypto’s most prominent advocates for privacy as an industry’s core value, emphasizing individual protection from state and corporate surveillance and arguing that decentralization helps disperse power away from a few dominant actors. This year, decentralized identity emerged as one of the industry’s most active responses to digital surveillances. Rather than converging on a single global identifier, new efforts increasingly emphasize selective disclosure enabled by new technologies, allowing users to prove specific attributes, such as uniqueness, eligibility or compliance, without revealing their full identity. The shift reflects a broader challenge facing blockchains, applications and regulators alike: how to verify users without turning networks into surveillance systems. Related: Identity checks to power AI stablecoin payments added to Coinbase-incubated x402 Ethereum becomes the main testing ground Unsurprisingly, Ethereum has emerged as one of the main testing grounds for decentralized identity and privacy-preserving infrastructure.  In an Oct. 29 thread, Ethereum’s X account said more than 750 privacy-focused projects were building on the network, many addressing identity, credentials and selective disclosure rather than anonymous payments alone. Source: Ethereum The thread was met with praise from the community, with the Book of Ethereum, a community-run account focused on Ethereum’s culture and ethos, responding with a post that described privacy, zero-knowledge tools and human-centric identity as an “unfolding reality” on Ethereum rather than a distant ideal. Source: The Book of Ethereum Buterin has also weighed in directly on…

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Filed under: News - @ December 25, 2025 2:27 am