After years talking up transparency, 2026 is the year privacy takes off in crypto thanks to Canton, Zcash, the Ethereum Foundation and others.
After years touting the amazing transparency of blockchains, the crypto community has started to realize that privacy is actually essential for many traders, businesses and individuals.
Until now, balancing the right to privacy with the need to avoid jail time on money laundering charges has proven a difficult task, as the developers of Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet have discovered.
But 2026 is the year that pragmatic privacy is poised to take off, with a slew of new projects tackling compliant forms of privacy for institutions and surging interest in existing privacy coins like Zcash — cheered on by Solana influencer Mert Mumtaz.
The Ethereum Foundation has formed a crack team of privacy experts to beef up protections in its ecosystem, while Coinbase is lobbying for updated regulations that don’t assume only bad actors want privacy.