Experts predict pragmatic, regulated onchain privacy gains in 2026

Privacy on public blockchains surged in 2025, driven in part by a more than 600% rise in Zcash, major privacy initiatives from Ethereum and Solana, and growing interest in zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption from startups. Several privacy experts lay out how that momentum could play out in 2026.

Bobbin Threadbare, co-founder of Miden, says privacy will be seen as practical rather than binary: systems will adopt conditional privacy tradeoffs that protect honest users while limiting abuse, for example by offering stronger privacy for low-risk transactions and tighter controls for high-risk activity.

Khushi Wadhwa of Predicate predicts 2026 will be the year of private stablecoins. She expects stablecoins with configurable privacy features—selective disclosure, amount obfuscation and sometimes full sender-receiver anonymity—to become core onchain payment rails, built with policy controls that allow compliance without eliminating baseline privacy.

Paul Brody, EY’s global blockchain leader, says privacy solutions are moving from theory to practice as projects such as Aztec, Nightfall, Railgun and others head from testnets toward production. He warns scale will depend on broader wallet support and clearer approaches to regulatory compliance.

Key Topics

Crypto, United States, Privacy, Blockchain, Stablecoins, Zkp, Regulation