# Privacy Cluster Leadership Announcement

Source: https://blog.ethereum.org/en/2025/10/01/privacy-cluster-leads

## Summary

The Ethereum Foundation has announced a new leadership structure for its privacy work, with Igor Barinov joining as coordinator of Privacy @ EF and Andy Guzman taking over as coordinator of the PSE team from Sam Richards. Barinov, founder of Blockscout, Gnosis Chain, and zkBob, will guide strategy and alignment across privacy-focused efforts including PSE, while Guzman will lead applied cryptography, research, and development. The Privacy @ EF Cluster organizes PSE's work across research, product, engineering, and operations, and is built around three pillars: Private Reads, Private Writes, and Private Proving. The announcement notes that more than 700 projects are building in the onchain privacy space.

## Article

Today we are proud to announce a new leadership structure for privacy-related efforts at the Ethereum Foundation:

Igor Barinov joins as coordinator of Privacy @ EF, guiding strategy and alignment across privacy-focused efforts including PSE and more. Igor has over a decade of experience in the Ethereum ecosystem as founder of Blockscout, Gnosis Chain, and zkBob, and is a strong advocate for open-source and privacy.

Andy Guzman will now serve as coordinator of the (PSE) team, taking over from Sam Richards and leading applied cryptography, research, and development. Andy has been with PSE/EF since 2022 and has led various key product & strategy initiatives since.

Together, Igor and Andy will help ensure Ethereum’s privacy work is impactful, coherent, and accountable.

A structure built around real use cases

Inside the Privacy @ EF Cluster, PSE organizes its work across research, product, engineering, and operations, with leads now in place to focus on each dimension. This structure supports three core pillars of privacy:

Private Reads: enabling individuals and institutions to query, authenticate, and browse without surveillance.

Private Writes: securing actions like payments, governance, and transfers against unwanted disclosure.

Private Proving: making proofs efficient, portable, and usable across contexts like identities, data portability, and client-side proving.

Each pillar supports the needs of users, developers, and institutions. They help individuals avoid the harms of metadata leaks, and are necessary for institutions to comply with data protection standards. They shield our private financial information, and let us choose what data to disclose while protecting our identities against theft.

Private reads, writes, and proving form the core building blocks for privacy which later enables everything from shielding your paycheck, proving your age, to securing institutions from data breaches.

Read more in the PSE Roadmap.

Why this matters

For Ethereum to become a foundation for civilizational infrastructure, privacy cannot be abstract research alone. It must be organized, resourced, and deployed at scale.

If you are building with privacy, or exploring privacy use cases, we invite you to connect with Igor or Andy and join the 700+ projects building in the onchain privacy space today.

Privacy is normal, and Ethereum is for privacy.