About | PSE

Our Mission

As Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE), our mission is to deliver privacy to the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ethereum is becoming core infrastructure for digital identity, commerce, and collaboration. But building

an open society in the electronic age

requires privacy that is usable, scalable, and secure.

Privacy is a cornerstone of freedom and an

important guarantor for decentralization.

It gives people the ability to organize, express, and transact freely. We envision a future where digital infrastructure respects privacy by default, and permissions are purpose-specific, informed, uncoerced, and revocable.

Programmable cryptography unlocks transformative capabilities for digital voting, identity, transactions, and other key systems of coordination. But the road to privacy isn't only technical—it demands cultural, social, and institutional change. This is a collective challenge that we are committed to catalyzing.

How we Work

We are a team of cryptographers, mathematicians, developers, designers, and coordinators working to make privacy accessible by embedding programmable cryptography into Ethereum's application layer.

Our work is exploratory and full stack. We focus on areas that are overlooked by academia or industry like foundational concepts that need clarity, implementation gaps that have stalled progress, and risky ideas with uncertain but transformative potential.

We believe meaningful progress comes from applying research to real-world needs. Our work is open source, and we maintain a feedback loop so that challenges from the field can help shape our focus. We aim to support the ecosystem by benchmarking new primitives, systematizing knowledge, and offering credible guidances for building a more private and resilient future for Ethereum.

What we do

Incubation

We research and build open source public goods like protocols, primitives, and products.

Education

We create resources to help Ethereum devs and users make informed choices about privacy.

Coordination

We push for better privacy standards by aligning efforts across the ecosystem and guiding policy conversations.

Our History

We began in 2018 as Applied ZKP, a team supported by the Ethereum Foundation to push zero-knowledge proofs from theory to practice. In 2021, we became Privacy & Scaling Explorations (PSE), expanding our scope to programmable cryptography and tools across the stack. In 2025, we refined our mission as Privacy Stewards for Ethereum, shifting our focus toward ecosystem impact.