Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
ZEC price shines exceptionally bright once again amid a market crash.
This morning, BTC briefly fell to $86,000, dragging the entire crypto market down. According to CoinGecko data, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies dropped to $3.042 trillion, a 24H decline of 5.5%.
In the context of a broad market downturn, ZEC, however, has shown strong performance, breaking through $700 this morning. Although the price has since retreated, the trend of ZEC/BTC clearly indicates that ZEC is continuously strengthening against BTC, displaying a completely different trend from mainstream altcoins (For more on the logic behind ZEC's surge, read: The Hidden Narrative Behind ZEC's Surge: The Migration of "Chen Zhi and Qian Zhiming" to Safe Havens).
ZEC's counter-trend rise may ignite a new wave of trend expectations for the entire privacy sector once the market warms up. This raises a question: besides the community's hot discussion about ZEC, which other projects in the privacy sector are worth paying attention to?
Launched Coins
For launched projects in the privacy sector, this section focuses on those with high recent discussion, active official presence, and a strong narrative atmosphere.
Established Coins
Monero (XMR): Launched in 2014, its sole focus is to make privacy a mandatory default option for all users. It achieves this through a powerful combination of stealth addresses, ring signatures, and a technology called RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions), which can hide transaction amounts.
Dash (DASH): Launched in 2014 under the name XCoin, it focuses on speed and ease of use, with privacy as an optional feature. Users can choose to mix their tokens with those of other users to obscure transaction history.
Horizen (ZEN): A blockchain platform focused on providing developers with tools to build private applications and sidechains. Its main chain uses zk-SNARKs technology similar to Zcash, offering optional privacy.
Decred (DCR): A blockchain that employs a PoW/PoS hybrid consensus, emphasizing governance and flexibility. As early as 2019, the project introduced an optional privacy feature based on an upgraded CoinJoin protocol, allowing DCR holders to obscure their transaction records while participating in staking, thus achieving anonymity of fund sources.
The four established privacy coins mentioned above, although with limited technological progress, have a light chip structure and are not heavily held by retail investors. Once the sentiment in the sector rises, short-term price performance often shines brightly. If the market warms up, and ZEC is believed to drive a general rise in the privacy sector, these established coins are worth prioritizing.
Low Market Cap Area
Succinct (PROVE): A decentralized zero-knowledge proof generation protocol that provides efficient, low-cost proof services through a global network of provers and a bidding mechanism, promoting scalability and privacy protection for blockchain and decentralized applications. PROVE is a relatively new coin, launched on Binance Alpha in early August, with a historical high of $1.71, currently priced at $0.48, with a market cap of $94 million.
Anoma (XAN): A project aimed at centralized infrastructure, building a universal intent system that supports cross-chain coordination and privacy protection. XAN is a relatively new coin, launched on Binance Alpha at the end of September, with a historical high of $0.27, currently priced at $0.036, with a market cap of $91 million.
PIVX (PIVX): An "ancient" project in the privacy sector, recently rebounding significantly with the rise in ZEC prices, worth noting. PIVX has increased over 50% in the past month, currently priced at $0.25, with a market cap of $25 million.
ZERA (ZERA): Formerly M0N3Y, a fully community-driven meme token. As the team clarifies its vision for privacy, zero-knowledge (ZK), and digital cash, they aim to transform the project from a purely speculative community into a long-term operational privacy protocol, as the old token system cannot support the new project needs. The token migration was completed on October 2, with an increase of over 75% in the past 14 days, currently priced at $0.027, with a market cap of $27 million.
The listed privacy sector coins have relatively low market caps and are mostly new coins, with potential for explosive growth. On one hand, attention should be paid to the net inflow of spot funds, changes in contract positions, funding rates, and other data to determine if "whales" are entering; on the other hand, it is essential to monitor whether the project officials have key activities, such as token buybacks, burns, staking rewards, etc.
Unlaunched Coins
For projects in the privacy sector that have not yet launched coins, it is worthwhile to gain early identity through interaction and active participation in the project community to seek token airdrops.
Zama
Project Overview: Zama is dedicated to providing privacy protection solutions for decentralized applications (DApps) through innovative zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology, ensuring user data privacy is not compromised, enhancing the security and trust of the blockchain ecosystem. Additionally, Zama is developing customized solutions in the fields of artificial intelligence, healthcare, financial services, and government security (For more content, read: The Next Blockchain Giant: Why ZAMA Can Raise $130 Million).
Attraction: Zama has completed two rounds of financing, totaling up to $130 million, including a $73 million Series A financing announced in March 2024, co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs; in June 2025, Zama announced the completion of $57 million Series B financing, led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital.
Interaction Tutorial: Zama first needs to complete guild tasks (link: https://guild.xyz/zama).
Basic Tasks: Link wallet to the Zama Guild, enter three out of four official communities to complete, and join the official Discord channel to obtain identity roles.
New to Zama? Tasks: Specifically include five sub-tasks, which can be easily completed according to task prompts.
Creator Program Tasks: Include two sub-tasks, with funding requirements for task one, and task two is for the creator program.
Developer Program Tasks: High requirements for tasks, to be completed based on individual circumstances.
Seismic
Project Overview: Seismic is an L1 project in the privacy sector, achieving protocol layer encryption through Intel TDX trusted execution environments, providing EVM-compatible privacy solutions.
Attraction: On November 12, Seismic announced the completion of $10 million in financing, led by a16z crypto, and completed $7 million in financing in March this year, also led by a16z crypto, bringing the total financing to $17 million to date.
Interaction Tutorial: The developer testnet is now live, with the mainnet expected to launch by the end of 2025.
STEP 1. Claim test coins (link: https://faucet-2.seismicdev.net/), where you can claim 0.5 ETH every hour.
STEP 2. Deploy contracts (link: https://www.onchaindaily.io/).
Additionally, you can go to the official Discord (link: https://discord.com/invite/seismic) in the "roll" channel for roles, with levels ranging from Magnitude 1.0 to Magnitude 9.0, all manually distributed by community management. Magnitude 1.0 is awarded based on user activity and chat quality in the group; Magnitude 2.0 to 9.0 is awarded every Friday based on user contributions to the project and community.
Inco
Inco is an EVM-compatible L1 project in the privacy sector that provides native privacy capabilities for smart contracts through Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Its core fhEVM combines FHE with EVM, enabling developers to perform computations directly on encrypted data, thus facilitating new use cases such as privacy games, DID, anonymous voting, and dark pool trading.
Attraction: On April 25, Inco announced the completion of $5 million in financing, led by a16z crypto CSX, and completed $4.5 million in financing last February, led by 1kx, bringing the total financing to nearly $10 million to date.
Interaction Tutorial: Currently, Inco's interactive operations mainly involve interacting with its supported ecosystem projects.
STEP 1. Go to the test coin claiming website (link: https://www.alchemy.com/faucets/base-sepolia), select the "Base Sepolia" test network, complete the human verification, and enter your address to claim test coin ETH (you need to have 0.001 ETH in your wallet on the Base mainnet to claim).
STEP 2. Enter the Hangman project interaction website (link: https://hangman.inco.org/), click "Connect Wallet to Play" to connect your wallet and start the word guessing game (select letters to form the correct word; each wallet selection requires 2 confirmations).
STEP 3. Enter the Comfy project interaction website (link: https://comfy.inco.org/), click "Connect Wallet," then select "Mint now" to mint USDC.
STEP 4. Select "Shield" to exchange some USDC for cUSDC, then click "Unshield" to exchange some cUSDC back to USDC.
STEP 5. Send cUSD to other addresses (you can also send it to personal interaction addresses).
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
