Forecasting the Future of Privacy: 4 Key Predictions for 2026

The year 2025 marked significant growth for on-chain privacy, with Zcash, a pioneering privacy coin, experiencing a substantial surge of over 600%. Furthermore, major initiatives were announced by Ethereum and Solana to integrate privacy into their networks. Startups focused on developing privacy-preserving technologies, including zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, continued to attract attention. Influencers such as Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Solana infrastructure firm Helius, dubbed 2025 the 'Privacy Szn,' emphasizing the importance of privacy for institutional adoption, as companies typically prefer not to conduct business on public blockchains with fully transparent ledgers. To gain insight into what 2026 holds, we consulted with five leading figures in the privacy space to share 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 become more apparent. Neither complete transparency nor absolute privacy is feasible in the real world, as privacy is crucial for honest users but can also be exploited by criminals. In 2026, people will begin to accept the idea of making trade-offs that limit privacy in specific contexts to make protocols more resistant to threats. A potential framework could involve providing conditional privacy for high-risk transactions while maintaining full privacy for low-risk transactions, similar to how cash functions in the real world. Another prediction is that 2026 will be the year 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. There will be increased development of stablecoins that incorporate 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 settlement. Enterprises will require privacy to protect sensitive commercial relationships and treasury movements, while retail users will increasingly reject fully transparent payment systems. Importantly, these systems will not operate outside of regulatory frameworks but will instead integrate policy controls that enable compliance without compromising baseline privacy. As a result, the concept of 'compliant payments' on-chain will be redefined, with private stablecoins becoming the preferred medium for both institutional settlement and everyday transactions. Additionally, privacy is expected to become industrialized. Paul Brody, EY's global blockchain leader, predicts that 2026 will be the year privacy starts to get industrialized on-chain. Multiple solutions, from Aztec to Nightfall to Railgun and COTI, are transitioning from testnet to production. However, challenges remain, as few consumer-facing wallets currently support these capabilities, and regulatory compliance approaches are likely to vary. Scale will not be achieved until these issues are addressed, but this marks the beginning of a shift from theoretical to practical applications. Finally, 'threat-resistance' is expected to become the norm. Wei Dai, Research Partner at 1kx, forecasts that threat-resistant on-chain privacy, where blockchains are designed to be highly resistant to data tampering and unauthorized access, will become the widely accepted standard. Instead of focusing on idealistic, theoretical privacy guarantees, more projects will prioritize developing pragmatic privacy solutions that facilitate the on-chain transition for individuals and businesses while deterring malicious actors from misusing privacy protocols for illicit activities. Threat-resistant privacy encompasses two categories of solutions: throttled privacy solutions that implement deposit delays and limit in-protocol transfers, and responsible privacy solutions that operate without velocity limits, where an information custodian is responsible for tracing the transaction graph in the event of any malicious hacks.