Original Title: Privacy trends for 2026
Original Author: @a16zcrypto
Translated by: Peggy, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: As the crypto industry gradually moves out of the "performance-first" phase, the core proposition for 2026 is shifting towards privacy, decentralization, and verifiable security. This article gathers insights from several leading builders, pointing to the same trend: these capabilities are evolving from "nice-to-haves" to foundational infrastructure. This shift also resonates with Vitalik Buterin's recent emphasis that "privacy is not an optional feature, but a prerequisite for the on-chain world to transition to a real society and institutional environment."
From privacy network effects and decentralized communication to "secrets-as-a-service" and "norms as law," crypto systems are addressing a more serious question: Is it reliable, is it trustworthy, and is it not easily shut down?
The following is the original text:
Throughout this week, we will continue to publish observations and judgments on this year's trends… Stay tuned, and don't forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more trend interpretations, industry reports, developer guides, news analyses, and other resources.
Privacy will become the most important moat in the crypto space this year
Privacy is the key prerequisite for the global financial system to truly migrate on-chain; however, it is also a core capability that is almost entirely missing from existing blockchains. For most public chains, privacy has long been merely a "bonus" that is mentioned in passing. But now, privacy alone is enough to make a chain stand out among numerous competitors.
More importantly, privacy can bring about another profound impact: it will create a chain-level lock-in effect—what can be termed as the "privacy network effect." This is particularly crucial in an era where it is increasingly difficult to differentiate based solely on performance.
With the help of bridging protocols, as long as everything is public, migrating from one chain to another is almost costless; but once privacy is involved, the situation changes completely: transferring tokens is easy, but transferring "secrets" is extremely difficult. Whether entering or exiting a privacy zone, there is a risk of being identified by on-chain observers, mempool monitors, or network traffic analysts. Crossing the boundary between private and public chains—even switching between two private chains—can leak a significant amount of metadata, such as the correlation between transaction times and amounts, thereby greatly reducing anonymity.
In contrast, new public chains that lack differentiation may be forced to lower transaction fees to near zero in competition (as block space has become highly homogeneous in nature). Meanwhile, blockchains with privacy capabilities can form much stronger network effects. The reality is: if a "general-purpose" public chain lacks a mature and thriving ecosystem, killer applications, or some unfair distribution advantage, there is almost no reason for users to choose it or build applications on it, let alone develop loyalty towards it.
On public blockchains, users can easily interact with others on different chains, and which chain they join is not important; but on privacy blockchains, the situation is quite the opposite—once users enter a certain chain, they are less willing to migrate and take the risk of exposing their identities. This naturally fosters a "winner-takes-most" pattern. Considering that privacy is an essential foundational capability for most real-world applications, it is likely that in the future, only a few privacy chains will occupy the majority of the crypto landscape.
——Ali Yahya (@alive_eth), General Partner at a16z crypto
This year, the core issue facing messaging applications is not just how to resist quantum computing, but how to achieve decentralization
As the world gradually moves towards the era of quantum computing, many encryption-based messaging applications (such as Apple, Signal, WhatsApp) have taken the lead and done a lot of excellent work. But the problem is that almost all mainstream instant messaging tools rely on a private server operated by a single organization. These servers are the weakest link, as they are the most susceptible to being shut down by governments, implanted with backdoors, or forced to hand over users' private data.
If a country can directly shut down a server; if a company holds the keys to a private server; or even if there is just one private server—then what significance does so-called quantum-level encryption have?
Private servers essentially require users to "trust me"; while the absence of private servers means "you don't need to trust me." Communication does not require a centralized company as an intermediary. What messaging systems need are open protocols, a way of communication that does not require trust in any single entity.
The path to achieving this is to completely decentralize the network: no private servers; no single application; all code open source; employing industry-leading encryption schemes—including protection against quantum threats.
In an open network, no individual, company, nonprofit organization, or country can deprive people of their ability to communicate with each other. Even if a country or company bans an application, 500 alternative versions will emerge the next day; even if a node is shut down, new nodes will immediately take its place due to the economic incentives provided by mechanisms like blockchain.
When people control their messages with keys just as they control their money, everything will fundamentally change. Applications can be replaced or disappear, but people will always retain control over their messages and identities; even if they no longer rely on a specific application, end users still own their communication content.
This is no longer just a matter of quantum resistance or encryption technology, but a question of ownership and decentralization. Lacking either of these, we are ultimately just building a "secure but easily shut down" encryption system.
——Shane Mac (@ShaneMac), Co-founder and CEO of XMTP Labs
"Secrets-as-a-Service" will become the core infrastructure of privacy
Behind every model, agent, and automated system lies a fundamental element: data. However, most current data pipelines—whether for inputting data into models or for model outputs—are often opaque, modifiable, and non-auditable.
This may be inconsequential for some consumer applications, but for industries like finance and healthcare, and for a large number of users, companies must ensure the confidentiality of sensitive data. This is a significant obstacle that many institutions face when promoting the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA).
So, how can we drive innovation that is secure, compliant, autonomous, and globally interoperable while protecting privacy?
There are many paths to achieve this, but I want to emphasize the direction of data access control: Who controls sensitive data? How does data flow? Who (or what system) can access this data?
Without data access control, any participant wanting to protect data confidentiality currently has to rely on centralized services or build customized solutions themselves—this is not only time-consuming and expensive but also makes it difficult for traditional financial institutions and others to truly unleash the full functionality and advantages of on-chain data management. As autonomous intelligent systems begin to browse information, initiate transactions, and make decisions on their own, users and institutions across industries need cryptographic certainty, rather than "best-effort trust."
For this reason, I believe we need secrets-as-a-service: a new technological framework that can provide programmable, native data access rules; client-side encryption; and decentralized key management mechanisms that clearly define and enforce—who can decrypt what data under what conditions and for how long… and all of this should be executed by on-chain mechanisms.
When these capabilities are combined with verifiable data systems, "secrets" can become part of the foundational public infrastructure of the internet, rather than just an afterthought privacy feature added at the application layer. In this way, privacy will no longer be an optional feature, but a true foundational infrastructure.
——Adeniyi Abiodun (@EmanAbio), Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Mysten Labs
In security testing, we will move from "code is law" to "norms are law"
In the past year, victims of DeFi hacks have often been those well-established protocols—those with strong teams, rigorous auditing processes, and years of operation in production environments. These incidents reveal a disturbing reality: current mainstream security practices still heavily rely on experiential judgment and case-by-case analysis, and are essentially heuristic.
If DeFi security is to mature this year, it must undergo a methodological leap: from focusing on vulnerability patterns to focusing on systemic properties at the design level; from "best-effort" to "principled security."
In the static/pre-deployment phase (testing, auditing, formal verification), this means no longer just validating a small subset of local constraints chosen by humans, but systematically proving global invariants. Currently, multiple teams are building AI-assisted proof tools that can help write specifications, propose invariants, and take on the previously highly manual and costly proof engineering work.
In the dynamic/post-deployment phase (runtime monitoring, runtime constraints, etc.), these invariants can be transformed into real-time effective security barriers, becoming the last line of defense for the system. These barriers will be directly written into the system in the form of runtime assertions, requiring that every transaction must meet established security conditions.
In this way, we are no longer assuming that all vulnerabilities have been discovered in advance, but are enforcing key security properties at the code level: any transaction attempting to violate these properties will be automatically rolled back.
This is not just theoretical. In fact, almost all known attacks to date trigger one of these checks during execution, providing an opportunity to be directly blocked when an attack occurs. Therefore, the once-popular "code is law" is evolving into "norms are law": even new attack methods must comply with security norms that maintain system integrity; ultimately, only attacks with minimal impact or that are extremely difficult to implement will remain.
——Daejun Park (@daejunpark), Engineering Team at a16z crypto
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