Forecasting the Future of Privacy: 4 Key Predictions for 2026

The year 2025 marked significant growth for on-chain privacy, with Zcash, a pioneer in privacy coins, experiencing a surge of over 600%. Additionally, Ethereum and Solana announced substantial initiatives to integrate privacy into their networks. Startups focused on developing privacy-preserving technologies, including zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, continued to gain momentum. Influencers such as Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, a Solana infrastructure firm, dubbed 2025 the 'Privacy Szn,' emphasizing the essential role of privacy in facilitating institutional adoption, as companies typically prefer not to conduct business on public blockchains with fully transparent ledgers. To gauge what's in store for 2026, we consulted with five leading figures in the privacy space to gather their predictions. A key prediction is that privacy will become more pragmatic, acknowledging that absolute privacy and full transparency are not viable in the real world. Instead, there will be a shift towards making trade-offs that limit privacy in specific contexts to enhance threat resistance. Another prediction is the emergence of private stablecoins as a core component of global on-chain payment infrastructure, offering configurable privacy features such as selective disclosure and transaction amount obfuscation. Furthermore, 2026 is anticipated to be the year when privacy solutions start to get industrialized on-chain, with multiple testnet solutions transitioning into production. Lastly, threat-resistant on-chain privacy, where blockchains are designed to be highly resistant to data tampering, is expected to become the standard, focusing on pragmatic solutions that deter malicious actors from misusing privacy protocols.