Vitalik Buterin said he is doubling down on privacy as Ethereum makes private reads, private writes and private proving technical priorities. He has framed privacy, censorship resistance, open source and security as Ethereum’s four non-negotiable properties, using the acronym CROPS. Proposed measures include FOCIL to limit block builders’ ability to exclude privacy-related transactions and a protocol-level shielded pool for ETH and ERC-20 transfers. The renewed focus builds on Buterin’s broader roadmap discussions, which also identified quantum-computing defenses and native rollups as priorities, while he has called for a reassessment of Ethereum’s general-purpose Layer 2 strategy.