Predicting the Future of Privacy in 2026

The year 2025 marked significant growth for on-chain privacy, with Zcash, a pioneering privacy coin, experiencing a substantial surge of over 600%. Major players like Ethereum and Solana also announced initiatives to integrate privacy into their networks. Startups focusing on zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption gained traction, underscoring the importance of privacy-preserving technologies. Influencers, including Mert Mumtaz, emphasized the significance of privacy for institutional adoption, as companies typically prefer not to conduct business on public blockchains with fully transparent ledgers. To gauge what's ahead for 2026, we consulted with leading figures in the privacy space to gather their predictions. A key expectation is that privacy will become more pragmatic, acknowledging that absolute transparency and absolute privacy 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 fundamental component of on-chain global payment infrastructure, offering configurable privacy features such as selective disclosure and transaction amount obfuscation. These stablecoins are expected to integrate policy controls for compliance without compromising baseline privacy. The industrialization of privacy on-chain is also anticipated, with multiple solutions transitioning from testnet to production. Furthermore, threat-resistant on-chain privacy, where blockchains are designed to be highly resistant to data tampering, is expected to become the standard. This will involve a focus on pragmatic privacy solutions that deter malicious actors while allowing individuals and businesses to operate on-chain securely.