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Ethereum Privacy for Institutions | Mo Jalil and Oskar Thoren

August 27, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Ethereum’s transparency is its superpower—and its biggest obstacle for institutional adoption. Every transaction, every balance, every DeFi interaction is visible to anyone. For a bank managing billions in client assets or a government rolling out a national payment system, that’s a non-starter. Mo Jalil and Oskar Thoren, co-founders of ETH Systems, a new for-profit spin-out from the Ethereum Foundation, have spent the last year bridging this gap. Their thesis: the cryptography is largely ready; the engineering and institutional hand-holding are what’s missing.

The Institutional Privacy Gap

The core problem is a tension between two worlds. Public Ethereum offers deep liquidity, composability, and new business models—things institutions desperately want. But institutions also need two things Ethereum natively lacks: business confidentiality and regulatory compliance. “You can’t get both without cryptography,” Thoren explains. A bank cannot let competitors see its trading positions, and a regulated entity cannot put all client data on a public ledger.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 Ethereum Privacy for Institutions | Mo Jalil and Oskar Thoren
  • 2 (00:02) **Introduction & Why Privacy Matters** - Host David introduces Mo Jalil and Oskar Thoren, co-founders of ETH Systems (spin-out from Ethereum Foundation), and asks why institutions need privacy on Ethereum.
  • 3 (01:35) **Backgrounds: From TradFi to Ethereum Privacy** - Mo and Oskar share their career arcs that led them to founding ETH Systems, spanning traditional finance, hedge funds, and a decade of Ethereum privacy work.
  • 4 (05:15) **What Is a "Privacy Strategy"?** - Oskar defines what the Ethereum Foundation's privacy strategy entails and how it connects institutions to the ecosystem.
  • 5 (07:33) **State of Privacy Solutions: Research vs. Engineering** - Assessment of whether privacy solutions are ready for institutional use or still need building.
  • 6 (10:33) **[Ad Break]**
  • 7 (12:24) **Most Common Institutional Privacy Needs** - Case studies of the specific privacy use cases institutions actually request.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Wall Street wants to come onchain, but public-by-default finance creates a problem institutions cannot ignore. ETH Systems co-founders Mo Jalil and Oskar Thoren join David to explain why privacy may be one of Ethereum’s biggest institutional unlocks, what banks and asset managers are actually asking for, and why the opportunity goes far beyond private payments.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 ETH Systems
1:34 The Founders
5:28 Institutional Privacy
12:43 Real-World Use Cases
21:19 From Bespoke to Scalable
30:22 Building the Product
33:40 Institutions Are Coming
35:40 The Future of Institutional DeFi
40:24 Privacy vs Transparency
46:51 What Ethereum Can Do?
49:54 Cypherpunks and Institutions

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RESOURCES

Oskar Thoren
https://x.com/oskarth

Mo Jalil
https://x.com/motypes

EthSystems
https://x.com/eth_systems

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