Ethereum’s next big upgrade has 66 proposals, including a major privacy fix

As with other blockchains, all Ethereum addresses are permanent and hold a running balance, so anyone can read an address’s full history and see what it holds. That presents a problem for payroll, treasury operations or anyone who would rather not publish their finances.

Dealing with that has been left to applications built on top of Ethereum. A package now under consideration would move part of the job into the network itself.

The centerpiece is Frame Transactions, or Ethereum Improvement Proposal 8141 (EIP-8141), which would let an account define how a transaction is approved, executed and paid for, rather than forcing every user through the same setup.

For an ordinary user, that could mean a wallet where someone else covers the fee, several actions are bundled into one payment, or the cryptography approving a transaction changes without moving to a new account.