privacy

According to CoinDesk, the Solana Foundation released a report titled "Privacy on Solana: A Comprehensive Approach for Modern Enterprises," which suggests that enterprise-level adoption requires flexible privacy controls and positions privacy as a customizable feature rather than a trade-off.The report argues that the next phase of crypto adoption will depend more on allowing enterprises to control the subjects and content of information disclosure, rather than solely relying on transparency. The Solana Foundation proposes that privacy encompasses four different modes: pseudonymity, confidentiality, anonymity, and complete privacy systems. Pseudonymity hides identity while transaction data is visible; confidentiality allows participants to be known but encrypts sensitive information; anonymity hides participant identities while transaction data is visible; and complete privacy systems obscure both identity and transaction data through technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party computation.The report emphasizes that there is no single privacy model suitable for all scenarios, and enterprises can mix different tools according to their needs. The report notes that Solana's high throughput and low latency enable advanced privacy technologies to operate at near-network speeds, making applications such as encrypted order books or private credit risk calculations possible. The Solana Foundation also proposed mechanisms such as "audit keys," allowing designated parties to decrypt transactions when necessary, thus achieving coexistence between privacy and regulation.

The official Ethereum team stated on the X platform that privacy within the Ethereum ecosystem is undergoing a transformation, and it could even be described as a renaissance. Ethereum originated from the cypherpunk movement, which has been part of the struggle for digital rights through open-source technology for decades, with the foundation of this struggle being the protection of privacy rights, meaning that users' online activities should not be repackaged and used for commercial purposes. Cypherpunk signifies a commitment to resisting censorship, open source, privacy, and security (abbreviated as CROPS).The new cypherpunk is a contemporary collaborative concept that upholds cultural values such as permissionless, privacy, decentralization, anti-censorship, trustlessness, and open source. It is oriented towards positive-sum games but rooted in a realistic political understanding of self-defense. Today's Ethereum embodies the new cypherpunk, modernizing traditional interpretations. This is cypherpunk with an Ethereum twist!The new cypherpunk is part of Eric Hughes' legacy, who is a paradigm of the deepest understanding of how to achieve privacy within the cypherpunk community. At the end of 2023, Vitalik called on the community to "revitalize Ethereum cypherpunk," and now may be the best time to become advocates for privacy within the Ethereum ecosystem.

According to The Block, Starknet is developing a new privacy feature aimed at enabling teams to issue protected stablecoins and other assets while maintaining compliance.This feature is called the STRK20 framework, developed by StarkWare, and is expected to be deployed on Starknet later this year.The framework is designed to provide token-level privacy protection for assets issued on Starknet, keeping transactions and balances confidential while being compatible with decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. According to the team, Starknet's solution is expected to support ERC-20 tokens—the standard used by most fungible assets on Ethereum.

MarsCat announced the completion of a $3 million financing round. This round was participated in by institutions such as Animoca Brands, Cogitent Ventures, Cryptogram Venture (CGV), TB Ventures, BD Ventures, and Becker Ventures.It is reported that MarsCat is a privacy-first P2P decentralized communication network aimed at achieving seamless interaction between Web3 applications without relying on centralized servers. The project is committed to providing scalable and secure infrastructure to ensure that users can fully retain control over their data.

Solana DEX aggregator Titan has launched the Private Swaps feature powered by Vanish, allowing users to conduct anonymous transactions on the Solana network through shielded wallets. Currently, this feature supports exchange transactions involving SOL.In addition, users who complete Private Swap transactions on Titan will receive a new Titan Privacy Badge.

According to DL News, the U.S. Treasury Department has, for the first time in its latest congressional report, acknowledged that privacy tools such as token mixers can serve legitimate financial privacy purposes. The wording has softened significantly compared to previous statements and is seen as the latest signal of the Trump administration's ongoing easing of regulatory attitudes towards the cryptocurrency industry.Jake Kennis, a senior research analyst at Nansen, pointed out that three forces—political tensions, tightening regulations, and the maturity of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology—are driving the privacy sector from a fringe speculative area into mainstream institutional themes. Currently, capital is accelerating towards compliant privacy projects such as Railgun, Nocturne, Zama, Aleo, and Nillion, covering scenarios like tokenization, payments, trade finance, and custody.However, risks cannot be ignored: the Treasury report also disclosed that North Korean hackers laundered billions of dollars through mixers between 2024 and 2025; the European Union also plans to ban exchanges from listing privacy coins like Zcash and Monero by 2027. Meanwhile, developers of privacy tools such as Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet have faced legal prosecution in the U.S. and Europe, with compliance pressure in the industry continuing to rise.

The U.S. Treasury submitted a 32-page report to Congress stating that cryptocurrency mixers can be used for legitimate financial privacy purposes, allowing users to protect sensitive information such as personal wealth, business payments, or charitable donations. This stance marks a shift from its attitude when sanctioning Tornado Cash in 2022.The report reveals that North Korean cybercriminals stole at least $2.8 billion in digital assets between January 2024 and September 2025, including $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit, and regularly used mixers for multi-step money laundering. Since May 2020, over $1.6 billion in mixer deposits have flowed into cross-chain bridges, with more than $900 million concentrated in a bridging protocol related to North Korean money laundering activities.The report distinguishes between custodial and non-custodial mixers, noting that compliant custodial mixers can provide customer identity and off-chain transaction data, but it did not recommend imposing new restrictions on non-custodial mixers. In terms of legislative recommendations, the report urges Congress to create a digital asset-specific "freezing law" to provide safe harbor protection for financial institutions to temporarily freeze suspicious assets during short-term investigations, and suggests that Congress clarify which DeFi participants should bear anti-money laundering obligations.The report also proposes adding a "sixth special measure" to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, authorizing the Treasury to impose bans or restrictions on specific digital asset transfers that do not involve agency banking relationships. This report was prepared based on Section 9 of the GENIUS Act signed in July 2025.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that, in the context of the increasing prevalence of AI agents, cryptographic privacy technologies are crucial for protecting users' API call patterns and behavioral data. He pointed out that even with local AI agents, if external services can see all search or API call records, they can still infer the activities users are engaged in.Vitalik believes that a preliminary solution is to forward requests through a mixnet to hide the source of access, but service providers may demand the introduction of anti-abuse mechanisms and pay-per-call models due to facing DoS attacks. In reality, these payment methods often rely on credit cards or stablecoin systems that lack privacy protection. Therefore, he emphasized the need for cryptographic payment solutions with privacy attributes.He further noted that privacy protection needs to be considered from a full stack perspective, with the local AI agent layer being particularly critical. Vitalik likened it to the issue of healthy lifespan: if there are multiple damaging factors, addressing them one by one can yield cumulative benefits; similarly, measures to reduce the risk of data leakage can produce similar compound effects.

Ethereum founder Vitalik stated, "I think it's a good thing for the Ethereum community to have a bolder and more open mindset, especially regarding the application layer and how we view our place in the world. We should not compromise on core attributes: censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security (CROPS). Especially at the application layer and in the interface between Ethereum and the outside world, we should be more willing to thoroughly rethink various concepts and step out of our comfort zone.Last year, we began to prioritize privacy and give it equal importance to other types of security. This means that the Ethereum application stack will undergo fundamental changes, as the entire stack has not been built around privacy so far. Great, let's build a completely different Ethereum application stack. An example this year is rethinking the role of L2 from scratch and determining which types of L2 can truly create the greatest synergy and benefits with Ethereum. This also includes cultural factors.For me and others, this is an important part of the "milady" concept. Write down your inherent notions of "decency," crumple them up, and burn them. This mental cleansing will lead to an intellectual cleansing, thereby sparking greater creativity and broadening perspectives. For a long time, our algorithm on Ethereum has been: we have an existing ecosystem, what should we do next to make it better? Now, our algorithm should be: we have a fantastic L1 layer, and it will become even better; we have more and more tools, including those developed inside and outside the ecosystem; based on what we currently know, what is the most valuable?If you were to write the section on applications from the 2014 Ethereum white paper, starting from first principles in areas like DeFi, decentralized social, and identity verification, what would you write? At the very least, please exclude all path dependency issues, assuming the Ethereum chain is currently unused, and you are the first to propose or build the first applications, and see what you would ultimately write. Even if you are currently building existing applications, please do this. This is the secret to revitalizing Ethereum."

Billionaire venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya recently stated that Bitcoin has "structural flaws" that may limit its widespread adoption by governments and central banks.During the World Government Summit, Palihapitiya pointed out that Bitcoin falls short in two key dimensions: privacy and fungibility, making it unsuitable as a central bank reserve asset. He explained that Bitcoin operates on a transparent blockchain, where transaction histories are permanently recorded, which can lead to certain coins being treated differently due to associations with illegal activities, undermining Bitcoin's fungibility. In contrast, gold meets the requirements of sovereign institutions for privacy and fungibility, which is why central banks continue to hold large reserves of gold.Palihapitiya believes that Bitcoin may struggle to achieve a tenfold increase in market value through central bank demand, but he remains optimistic about digital financial innovation, particularly stablecoins.

The founder of Venice, Erik Voorhees, posted on the X platform stating that the current privacy model of the Venice platform does not store prompts and response content on servers, and they will not be retained, viewed, or extracted, but this privacy cannot currently be proven.He stated that verifiable privacy protection has been on the roadmap since the project's inception, and this feature will be delivered soon.

According to GoPlus monitoring, the privacy gaming platform FOOM CASH was attacked on Base and Ethereum, resulting in a loss of 24,283,773,519,600 FOOM (approximately $2.26 million). The vulnerability that led to the attack was due to a misconfiguration of the verification key, which the attacker exploited to forge zkSNARK proofs and then extracted a large amount of FOOM tokens from the attacked contract.

According to the official blog, Starknet has announced the launch of a new type of wrapped asset, strkBTC, aimed at providing optional privacy protection features for Bitcoin. strkBTC is an asset issued on Starknet that can be exchanged bi-directionally for native Bitcoin, designed to address the financial privacy leakage issues caused by the transparency of the Bitcoin ledger.strkBTC supports two modes: in "non-shielded mode," it operates as a standard ERC-20 token, with balances and transfers publicly verifiable; in "shielded mode," asset balances and transaction details will be hidden. This privacy mechanism is designed based on pragmatism, defaulting to confidentiality for the public, but supporting compliance audits through a Viewing Key to ensure it can operate in regulated environments. With strkBTC, users can participate in DeFi collateralization or settlement without exposing their positions and strategies. Starknet states that strkBTC will be officially launched soon and will gradually expand its privacy features in the future.

NEAR has launched the Confidential Intents feature, which is a built-in cross-chain transaction privacy execution function within NEAR Intents, aimed at addressing the long-standing issue of transaction transparency in DeFi.Confidential Intents constructs a restricted visibility execution environment through NEAR private shards, making transaction details invisible to the outside during the settlement process. Users can freely switch between their main account and confidential account within the application, enabling privacy mode for operations such as transfers, deposits, and withdrawals. The privacy feature for currency swaps is also set to launch soon. This feature is targeted at institutional capital, enterprise users, and advanced DeFi users, providing a privacy protection layer for cross-chain positions.