Ethereum Proposes EIP-8182 for Unified Privacy Across All ETH and ERC-20 Transfers

On May 25, 2026, EIP-8182 was introduced to deliver protocol-level privacy via a unified shielded pool for every ETH and ERC-20 transfer on mainnet. This builds on Vitalik Buterin’s May 20 three-step native privacy roadmap (Account Abstraction + FOCIL, EIP-8250 keyed nonces, and access-layer tools) targeted for the Hegota upgrade. Earlier milestones include Base’s May 4 migration of $12 billion to SP1 zkVM for one-day finality, the May 12 Quantum Shield hard fork deploying NIST post-quantum cryptography on major L2s, PSE’s May 14 ACTA proposal for private AI agents, and QuarkChain’s May 19 pivot to an Ethereum L2 AI stack. The coordinated upgrades strengthen Ethereum’s privacy, security, and scalability positioning.