Forecasting the Future of Privacy: 4 Key Predictions for 2026

The year 2025 marked significant milestones for on-chain privacy, with Zcash, a pioneering privacy coin, experiencing a substantial surge of over 600%. Moreover, major blockchain networks such as Ethereum and Solana announced initiatives to integrate privacy features. Startups focusing on zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption also gained considerable traction. Influencers, including Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, emphasized the importance of privacy, dubbing it 'Privacy Szn,' and highlighting its necessity for institutional adoption due to the preference for non-public blockchains. To gaze into the future of privacy in 2026, we consulted with leading figures in the privacy space to gather their predictions. A key prediction is that privacy will become more practical. According to Bobbin Threadbare, co-founder of Miden, the notion that privacy is not binary will gain acceptance. Neither complete transparency nor absolute privacy is feasible in the real world, as privacy, while essential for honest users, can also be exploited by criminals. Thus, making trade-offs to limit privacy in specific contexts to enhance threat resistance will become more accepted. A potential framework could involve providing conditional privacy for high-risk transactions while maintaining full privacy for low-risk ones, similar to how cash operates in the real world. Another prediction is the rise of private stablecoins. Khushi Wadhwa, head of business development at Predicate, forecasts that private stablecoins will emerge as a core component of global on-chain payment infrastructure. These stablecoins will embed configurable privacy by default, including features like selective disclosure, transaction amount obfuscation, and sender-receiver anonymity. This growth will be driven by the need for confidential payment settlements, with enterprises requiring privacy to protect commercial relationships and treasury movements, and retail users seeking alternatives to fully transparent payment systems. Importantly, these systems will integrate policy controls for compliance without compromising baseline privacy, redefining 'compliant payments' on-chain and making private stablecoins the preferred medium for both institutional and everyday transactions. Paul Brody, EY's global blockchain leader, predicts that 2026 will be the year privacy becomes industrialized on-chain, with multiple solutions transitioning from testnet to production. However, challenges such as the lack of support from consumer-facing wallets and varied approaches to regulatory compliance may hinder scale until these issues are addressed. Lastly, Wei Dai, Research Partner at 1kx, forecasts that threat-resistant on-chain privacy will become the standard. Instead of focusing on theoretical privacy guarantees, projects will prioritize pragmatic solutions that deter malicious actors from misusing privacy protocols. Threat-resistant privacy includes solutions like throttled privacy, which implements deposit delays and limits in-protocol transfers, and responsible privacy solutions that operate without velocity limits, with an information custodian responsible for tracing the transaction graph in case of hacks.