privacy

Former Superstate engineering head Jon Walch tweeted that his new company Offworld Privacy will bring privacy cryptocurrencies like Zcash to private DeFi on Helius Privacy and Aztec Network. The first products include a trust-minimized shielded Zcash bridge and a private lending protocol.

According to official news from Solana, the Solana infrastructure company Helius today launched the permissionless privacy protocol Solana Privacy Rings on the Solana mainnet. Developers can add privacy features to new and existing Solana applications through the API, laying the foundation for private payments, privacy DeFi, and enterprise compliance privacy.Privacy Rings are programmable shielded pools, with assets and amounts encrypted and stored on-chain, while wallet addresses remain visible. Users can decrypt balances by viewing the viewing key, supporting SOL, SPL tokens, and Token-2022 tokens, with ZK proof verification taking only a few hundred milliseconds. Its core program and ZK circuits have been audited by Certora, OtterSec, and ZK Security. The institution-oriented permissioned Custom Rings are currently under audit and are expected to go live on the mainnet in the coming weeks, supporting compliance features such as KYC whitelisting, sanctions screening, and fund freezing and recovery.Currently, Decrypt, Ore, and others have integrated, while teams such as Backpack, DFlow, Jupiter, and Squads are in the process of integration, with Chainalysis, Elliptic, and others providing compliance support for wallet screening.

Decrypt announces a partnership with the Solana infrastructure company Helius to introduce confidential transfer features for the Decrypt Money Account. This feature is based on Helius's Solana Privacy Rings privacy system, allowing users to send funds without disclosing the transfer amount, and transactions will not appear on the Solana public ledger. This move is part of Decrypt's evolution towards The Information Exchange, which integrates news reading, trading, and prediction markets into a single account.Decrypt co-founder and COO Ilan Hazan stated that he hopes the Decrypt Money Account will be at the forefront of on-chain finance, providing a user experience that goes beyond traditional financial platforms, with privacy as a core component.Helius's product head Tilo Palfner pointed out that public wallets expose users' holdings, transfer methods, and transaction behaviors. Once a wallet is linked to a personal identity, its financial history becomes visible to the entire network. He noted that the user experience of Solana Privacy Rings is similar to regular Solana transfers, completing almost instantly, with the difference being that outsiders cannot see the transfer details.The Decrypt Money Account does not require a mnemonic phrase, gas fees, or cross-chain bridges, and the underlying technology uses simple zero-knowledge proofs to allow users to prove ownership and control without disclosing their balance. Currently, the privacy feature only covers fund transfers and does not yet involve exchanges, earn, and prediction market positions supported by Jupiter on The Information Exchange.The core program is already running on the Solana mainnet and has been audited by Certora, OtterSec, and ZK Security; Helius plans to launch Custom Rings in the fourth quarter of 2026, allowing institutions to set their own compliance controls and audit access permissions.

According to official news, ZKsync announced the launch of Prividium Connect, which supports financial institutions in conducting privacy-preserving atomic transactions between existing blockchain networks without relying on trusted intermediaries or third-party bridging services.This solution verifies whether transactions comply with agreed rules through zero-knowledge proofs and protects sensitive information such as institutional account balances, asset positions, and customer identities; if either party fails to complete the delivery on time, they can reclaim their respective assets.Prividium Connect currently supports Hyperledger Besu and Prividium Ledger, and will expand to more networks in the future based on customer demand. ZKsync also proposed deploying a standardized version on public chains, with related activation, integration, and fee parameters still needing community governance approval.

Zcash community member ValarDragon posted on the official community forum, proposing a series of plans to be included in the NU8 network upgrade, and suggested setting the upgrade target for the end of January 2027. The main content includes the launch of the Tachyon shielded pool, expanding transaction formats, increasing the maximum block size from 2MB to 8MB, and adding support for post-quantum cryptography transparent transaction opcodes.Other proposals also include: adjusting the NSM redistribution date to be closer to the time of Zcash's seventh halving; determining a date at the protocol level for Sapling to stop accepting new deposits while continuing to support transactions and withdrawals; and eliminating the need to update the Consensus Branch ID with each network upgrade to reduce wallet compatibility issues. ValarDragon stated that with the combination of Tachyon and larger block capacity, a shielded transaction processing capability of approximately 200 TPS is expected. In addition, the post-quantum transparent transaction feature will introduce schemes based on SPHINCS with 128-bit and 192-bit security levels. The above content currently belongs to the upgrade ideas proposed by community members, and specific implementation still depends on development progress and subsequent NU8 discussions and voting.

On November 9, Apex, the founder of Veil, announced that the team has decided to shut down Veil. Deposits will cease immediately, while the front end and relay will continue to operate until December 21, 2026. After that, withdrawals can still be completed through command line tools. Apex stated that after two years of development, the privacy solution they hoped to achieve has not been scaled. The protocol experienced a strong usage phase but was unable to sustain it. The privacy strength of Veil relies on usage, and a decline in usage will weaken privacy. In recent months, the protocol has not consistently delivered its core value as set. Public information shows that Veil is a zero-knowledge privacy protocol supported by Coinbase Ventures.Apex stated that despite not resolving the initial issues, they still view privacy as the most challenging problem in the cryptocurrency industry to date and thanked Base, the Coinbase team, and all parties who held, used, or supported Veil for their assistance over the past two years. The shutdown also means that support for the VEIL token will stop on the same day, including staking rewards and liquidity provider incentives, and the tokens held by the treasury will be destroyed. Apex mentioned that they will not leave the industry and remain optimistic about cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, and Base, but the specific direction for the next phase of development has not yet been determined. They indicated that Veil had previously occupied all their energy, and future projects would need to achieve the same level of conviction before proceeding.

NeoSoul and Brevis announced a technical collaboration to explore how to protect sensitive data in AI trading.As AI Agents take on more specific trading tasks, users' trading methods, preferences, and related data will also enter the product workflow. For individual users and platforms, clear data usage boundaries and explicit computational verification methods are important considerations in the design of such products.Brevis is a verifiable computing platform based on zero-knowledge proofs, with related technology supporting the processing of historical data from the supported chain, executing specified computations, and verifying computation results through proofs. This collaborative exploration will combine the practical needs of AI trading to study applicable scenarios for the relevant technology.NeoSoul continues to advance product development around Agentic Trading, refining the AI trading experience for individual users through NeoTrade, and promoting capability openness for platforms and other Agents. The collaboration with Brevis is a progress in NeoSoul's expansion of professional technical cooperation in this direction.NeoSoul's co-founder stated: "In the future, more and more AI Agents will directly participate in financial markets on behalf of individuals and platforms, and financial infrastructure needs to adapt to a new batch of market participants. Protecting trading strategies and computational verification will become crucial issues that restrict the scaling of Agentic Trading. Our collaboration with Brevis aims to provide the necessary technical foundation for the development of this trend."

According to CoinDesk, the privacy public chain Midnight has upgraded its mainnet to Ledger 9, adding support for privacy asset transfers, introducing inter-contract call execution features, and new cryptographic standards such as Keccak-256 and ECDSA.

According to Digital Asset, Mastercard has obtained two U.S. patents aimed at assessing money laundering risks before users conduct cryptocurrency transfers, and completing approvals without disclosing transaction details to the outside world. According to documents released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Mastercard acquired these two patents on November 3.The first technology analyzes the historical transaction records of the recipient before the transfer and estimates the increase in the user's own risk score after the transaction is completed, helping users decide whether to proceed. The second technology allows transactions to be processed within a private network composed of authorized nodes, with a central system verifying balances and deciding whether to release the transaction, thereby protecting transaction privacy and preventing double spending.

According to trader Ansem, Zcash has recently been one of the stronger assets in the cryptocurrency market. If the market experiences a deeper correction, he will pay attention to whether ZEC can maintain its resilience.He believes that as the cryptocurrency industry faces more political and regulatory scrutiny, the narrative around privacy may become increasingly important. Privacy features, concerns about quantum computing, and market interest in transparent blockchain alternatives have drawn his attention to ZEC.

Bull Bitcoin, a Bitcoin-exclusive exchange, announced a deep integration with Payjoin, claiming to be the world's first Bitcoin exchange to offer Payjoin as a deposit and withdrawal option, introducing two new concepts: "default Payjoin" and "Payjoin transaction." Founded in 2013 by Francis Pouliot in Canada, Bull Bitcoin is the longest-operating Bitcoin-exclusive exchange globally, with its non-custodial platform allowing users in Canada, Europe, and Latin America to buy Bitcoin directly into their wallets or sell Bitcoin to bank accounts. The company also developed the free and open-source Bitcoin self-custody wallet BULL Wallet, which has been self-funded since its inception.Payjoin is an on-chain privacy protocol for Bitcoin that breaks the fundamental assumptions made by on-chain analysis companies about user behavior, such as the assumption that one of the unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) generated by a transaction is change returned to the sender. The protocol adds a layer of off-chain coordination that obscures user intent by making the amounts sent and returned ambiguous, thus protecting on-chain privacy without requiring a hard or soft fork of the Bitcoin consensus. When BULL Wallet users buy and sell Bitcoin on-chain through the built-in exchange, transactions will default to using Payjoin, helping buyers passively aggregate UTXOs in their wallets, reducing future Bitcoin miner fees while shrinking the Bitcoin UTXO set size and alleviating fee pressure for all users.Payjoin transactions are used to protect users from malicious actors attempting to glean their financial habits through on-chain analysis. Since Bitcoin transaction amounts are public, outsiders may infer personal salaries or investment strategies, and as a non-custodial exchange, Bull Bitcoin leaves an on-chain trace for every transaction. In December 2024, BULL Wallet became the world's first wallet to integrate the Payjoin V2 protocol, a project advanced in collaboration with Dan Gould and the Payjoin Dev Kit team, with all related wallet and exchange software being completely free and open-source. Users only need to download BULL Wallet, create a Bull Bitcoin exchange account, and log in through the BULL mobile app, with the rest of the process being automated.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated in an interview that Ethereum will undergo a series of changes in the coming years, aiming to fully leverage the latest technologies, especially various cutting-edge technologies including graphics processing capabilities, and push these technologies to a new stage of development, enabling Ethereum to handle multiple tasks in parallel while maintaining decentralization. He mentioned that Ethereum is changing its past development model, as previous goals were difficult to achieve due to technical complexity, high risks, and implementation challenges. With significant advancements in technology, these obstacles are no longer as hard to overcome.Vitalik stated that Ethereum itself adopts very conservative, hash-based cryptographic technologies, while the idea for applications built on top of it is to innovate starting this year based on maintaining the underlying security, trying different technological routes rather than simply replicating Ethereum and smart contracts. He noted that performance protocols and various privacy protocols have emerged with different exploratory directions. Taking enterprise applications as an example, companies can record and manage supply chain data on their own servers and then submit relevant data and its proofs via blockchain to demonstrate that all parties involved comply with established rules. This approach neither compromises privacy nor affects efficiency.Vitalik also mentioned that other developers can build more applications on this foundation, such as splitting related assets or launching loan products supported by asset collateral. Some clear and noteworthy categories of applications have already emerged. He is concerned about the extent to which these applications can provide security guarantees when facing various potential threats and stated that the final choice lies with the application side, which can opt for a conservative technological route or try more radical solutions. He believes that the strategy of the Ethereum Foundation is to focus on what it is currently doing, leaving areas beyond its professional capabilities for users and the community to explore independently, and when able to provide support, to help developers improve their technical levels, enhance security, privacy protection, and openness from a technical perspective, without attempting to control all areas.

According to CoinDesk, Zcash holders need to transfer approximately 16 million dollars from the oldest privacy pool Sprout before the NU7 network upgrade. This upgrade is expected to activate around 10:30 AM Beijing time on November 6 (Friday) (9:30 PM Eastern Time on Thursday), at which point these tokens will be unusable even if valid private keys are held.As of Thursday morning, there were still about 12,226 ZEC in the Sprout pool, valued at approximately 16 million dollars based on a price of 1,300 dollars per coin. NU7 plans to activate at block 3543405, which will reject version 4 transactions, the only transaction format that can spend Sprout tokens. ZIP 2003 retains the possibility of restoring access through future upgrades but warns that the withdrawal feature may never be re-enabled. NU7 will also reduce the target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds.

ZetaChain announced on platform X that on December 9, the ZETA token will migrate to Solana, becoming a native token. The privacy AI application ZetaLabs will also launch simultaneously, with ZETA serving as its core token. The second governance proposal is now open for voting on ZetaHub and will end on November 7, clarifying the migration mechanism, specific timeline, and holder protection measures.If the proposal passes, ZetaChain L1 will cease operations around December 9, with ZETA migrating to Solana's native token at a 1:1 ratio, and minting rights will be permanently revoked. Holders do not need to take any action before this. In 2027, the supply of ZETA will decrease rather than increase. Approximately 55 million unallocated validator rewards will be destroyed monthly according to the original release schedule, with no inflation generated after the migration. Tokens for investors and core contributors will be fully unlocked by January 1, 2027. The foundation also promises not to sell the newly unlocked ZETA it holds in 2027.

According to official news from Privacy Cash, the project is suspending deposits. The team stated that in light of the recent hacking attack on Binance, they want to ensure that malicious actors cannot use their products.The official statement said that the original intention of the project is to provide privacy tools for everyday users, not to assist in criminal activities. During the suspension, they will continue to strengthen the wallet screening system, and withdrawals can still be made. The time for resumption will be announced separately.

On November 3, the Ethereum Layer 2 project Scroll released a protocol upgrade proposal on its official governance forum, aiming to transform the existing permissionless general-purpose L2 network into a permissioned dedicated network focused on privacy AI applications, and to migrate the SCR token to the Ethereum mainnet, while keeping the token supply and overall token economic model unchanged.Scroll stated that operating a general-purpose network makes it difficult to ensure sustained demand, while the underlying infrastructure still needs to bear maintenance costs. Therefore, it plans to establish new network demand around AI products such as Compass, CENO, and USX. According to growthepie data, the net profit on the Scroll chain is only about $42.50, a decrease of approximately 92% over the past year.

Onchain Lens stated that addresses related to the Binance hacker have begun using mixing tools to process the stolen funds, with approximately $800,000 mixed so far. One associated address deposited 8,567 SOL into the Solana privacy mixing tool Privacy Cash, worth about $798,000.

Vitalik emphasized trusted hardware and privacy protection in his keynote speech at Devcon, and the Ethereum Foundation outlined related goals such as open chips.

According to The Block, the Aztec Foundation behind the Ethereum privacy Layer 2 network Aztec has launched the Tierra (Alpha V6) upgrade, which fixes security vulnerabilities from previous versions, including a critical vulnerability in V5, and introduces an AI-based security testing system.In terms of performance, the new version doubles the speed of generating privacy transaction proofs, taking only about 1 second on local devices; the time for Ethereum messages to reach Aztec has also been reduced from an average of about 2 minutes to as fast as 12 seconds, further enhancing cross-chain deposit and transaction efficiency. Aztec stated that due to the network's decentralized architecture, fixing critical vulnerabilities requires an upgrade of the entire network, and plans are currently underway to accelerate the deployment of future security updates.In terms of ecosystem, Aztec has recently relaunched the self-custody privacy wallet zk.money, and several applications are being launched or prepared for launch, including Galactica, which supports privacy AI inference, the privacy perpetual contract trading platform Nemi, the privacy browser wallet Nulo, and Xochi and Nyx, which support privacy payments and transactions. Meanwhile, Aztec has also released a new brand image and website, aiming to become the infrastructure platform for privacy applications.