[Vitalik co-published the paper "Blockchain Privacy and Regulatory Compliance: Towards a Practical Equilibrium"] On September 6, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and researchers from Chainalysis, University of Basel and other institutions jointly published a paper titled "Blockchain Privacy and Regulatory Compliance: Towards a Practical Equilibrium". The paper studies Privacy Pools, an enhanced privacy protocol based on smart contracts. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the protocol and shows how it can be applied to create a separation equilibrium between honest and dishonest users. The core idea of ​​the paper is to allow users to publish zero-knowledge proofs to prove that their funds (do not) come from known (un)legal sources without publicly revealing their entire transaction graph. This goal is achieved by proving membership in a custom set of associations that meet certain property requirements, which are specified by regulation or social consensus. This paper may be the first step towards a future where people can prove compliance with regulatory requirements without disclosing their entire transaction history.