Author: Haotian

Let's talk about why the privacy sector will be the core narrative of cryptocurrency in 2026.

In addition to $ZEC, I recommend paying attention to the potential performance opportunities of @zama, @boundless_xyz, and @anoma:

1) First, let's discuss a core driving logic: the privacy sector has evolved from being suppressed by regulation to becoming a necessity for compliance. For the past decade, blockchain privacy has been a false proposition because the technical path was chosen incorrectly. Most projects pursued privacy for the sake of privacy, implementing indiscriminate anonymity while ignoring compliance boundaries and the feasibility of business expansion, which led to continuous regulatory suppression. The ongoing sanctions against @TornadoCash are a typical case.

2) However, in 2025-2026, the situation will be different. The strong performance of $ZEC in the secondary market is the most obvious signal. As a long-established leader in privacy, @Zcash has validated over ten years, along with Naval's endorsement, that privacy is not a false demand, but rather a matter of timing. This is because the core technical path has changed. The current generation of privacy projects is focused on "programmable compliance," which protects user privacy while leaving a backdoor for regulators. This aligns perfectly with the needs of the institutional-led Crypto era's underlying architecture, such as RWA asset tokenization and transaction agentification.

3) Therefore, the explosion of the privacy sector is no longer just a past hype concept, but an inevitable result of industry evolution. Following this line of thought, let's look at the strategic positioning of the following three projects:

1. @zama (FHE), this represents a revolutionary infrastructure for privacy technology at the most fundamental level. The core understanding lies in the essential difference between FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) and ZK. Zcash uses ZK to prove "I know the secret," but FHE can directly process data in an encrypted state. For example, Zcash can hide transaction amounts, but FHE allows the entire DeFi protocol's collateral, lending, and liquidation processes to operate in ciphertext, with nodes completely unaware of what is being computed.

Zama does not create a new chain but builds a Privacy Layer for all EVM chains, akin to "HTTPS for blockchain." Through fhEVM, Zama enables mainstream chains like Ethereum, Base, and Solana to gain privacy computing capabilities, opening up possibilities for scalable commercial applications. Once it secures this role, it will become the "shovel seller" of the entire Crypto industry.

The key is that Zama is collaborating with Fabric Cryptography to develop FPGA acceleration cards. Once implemented, FHE's TPS could increase by 10-100 times, and Gas costs could drop by two orders of magnitude. At that point, it may shed the "toy" label of FHE cryptographic holy grail and move towards consumer-grade applications.

2. @anoma (Intent-centric), this is positioned as a web3 intent operating system aimed at reconstructing the transaction paradigm. Traditional DeFi users' transactions typically run naked in the Mempool, with intentions fully exposed to MEV bots. Anoma focuses on counterparty discovery privacy, allowing users to publish encrypted intentions, with Solvers facilitating transactions without decrypting (in conjunction with FHE or TEE); it is evident that this solution addresses privacy issues at a basic level, while also tackling multi-chain fragmentation and interaction complexity.

3. @boundless_xyz (zkVM), this is the infrastructure for the marketization of ZK computing power, addressing the "general privacy proof" problem, which has been severely underestimated in its role within the privacy sector. Boundless is incubated by @RiscZero, turning ZK proof generation into a tradable computing commodity, modularly embedded into any scenario requiring ZK verification.

In the future, as the demand for ZK-Rollup and ZK Coprocessors explodes on a large scale, Boundless will be the decentralized carrier generating massive amounts of ZK proofs. Boundless opens up infinite possibilities for privacy applications: on-chain identity, on-chain credit, on-chain compliance, and strategy proofs for AI Agents can all achieve privacy protection through zkVM.

That's all.

Rationally deducing, the privacy sector cannot grow strong solely relying on Zcash. If $ZEC is a super narrative engine for the privacy sector, then Zama builds the encryption computing layer, Anoma builds the intent matching layer, and Boundless builds the general proof layer, forming a complete technical stack that supports the flourishing narrative of the privacy sector, with none being dispensable.

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