On January 25, 2026, at 8:00 AM UTC+8, the public sale of the privacy protocol Zama officially ended. The official announcement disclosed that approximately $121.25 million was raised in this round, with a total of 7,651 investors participating, submitting a total of 17,446 bids, which stands out particularly in the current market environment. According to the schedule, Zama tokens will be available for collection on February 2. This date not only marks the end of the public sale phase but will also serve as the first checkpoint to test the market's real demand and short-term trading sentiment. Surrounding this "influx of funds into the privacy narrative" public sale, there is a strong subscription enthusiasm validated by data on one side, and the tension between the long-term value of privacy technology and short-term speculative sentiment on the other. This contradiction will also become a key entry point for observing the next stage of evolution in the privacy sector.
7,000 People Compete for $120 Million: How Hot is This Frenzy?
● Scale of Funds and Participation Enthusiasm: The Zama public sale ultimately raised approximately $121.25 million, which has positioned it among the top projects in recent times during a phase of overall cooling in the crypto primary and public sale markets. The number of participants reached 7,651, with a total of 17,446 bids, indicating that many addresses made multiple attempts or placed orders in batches, reflecting a strong trend of active fund acquisition, which objectively raised the subscription threshold and competition intensity for this public sale.
● Average Bid and Competition Intensity: Roughly estimating based on public data, if the $121.25 million is evenly distributed among 7,651 investors, the average bid size corresponds to about $15,800, while the 17,446 bids reflect that individual participants bid more than twice on average. This structure of "multiple bids from many people" suggests that some funds are actively gaming the amount and allocation ratio within the price range. The public sale is not just a simple subscription process but a competition for price and chips.
● Relative Performance and Comparison: In the privacy sector, it is rare for a project to raise over $100 million in a single public sale, especially when market risk appetite has not fully recovered. Although the briefing did not provide specific data on other projects, from the current overall financing environment in the industry and the average fundraising amounts of leading projects, Zama's public sale size is clearly higher than the historical levels of most medium-sized privacy protocols, giving it a strong relative voice and demonstration effect in public sales within the same sector.
Rising Demand for Privacy: What Rhythm Did Zama Hit?
● Sentiment Signals and Market Expectations: The external evaluation that "Zama's public sale demonstrates strong market demand for privacy technology" reflects the symbolic significance assigned to this round of fundraising—it's not just a bet on a single project but is seen as a collective vote for the direction of privacy infrastructure. The rapid completion of fund allocation exceeding $100 million indicates that in the rotation of crypto narratives, the privacy theme is forming a market expectation that is shifting from a marginal topic to a "must-have direction."
● Macroeconomic Environment and Regulatory Pressure: Recently, regulatory tools targeting on-chain compliance, data tracking, and anti-money laundering have been continuously upgraded. While on-chain transparency has increased, it has also strengthened the institutional demand for "controllable privacy" and "compliant privacy." In this context, privacy protocols are no longer just tools for resisting scrutiny but are more likely to evolve into underlying facilities that meet the "refined data isolation" needs of institutions and compliant applications. This change in the environment has brought higher levels of attention and policy discussion space for projects like Zama.
● Connection of Technical Narrative and Asset Narrative: From a technical perspective, Zama is classified as a privacy infrastructure project, with its narrative core revolving around how to complete computations and interactions without exposing plaintext data. From an asset perspective, the public sale tokens themselves are viewed by funds as a leveraged tool to bet on the "increased penetration of the privacy sector." The intersection of the two lies in the market's increasing tendency to seek targets that have "clear technical paths and tradable asset carriers." Zama effectively connects these two lines with market fund preferences through its public sale, existing simultaneously in both technical and asset narratives.
From Subscription to Token Collection: February 2 is the First Test
● Key Time Point and Liquidity Shock: According to the official schedule, Zama tokens will be available for collection on February 2, marking a transition from locked funds to circulating chips. As a large number of tokens become available for use at the same time, in the short term, whether it is concentrated selling pressure, turnover, or the redistribution of liquidity between over-the-counter and on-market, all will be concentrated around this time point. The market will also intuitively feel the actual strength of the public sale's heat being transmitted to secondary trading behavior for the first time.
● Participation Structure and Potential Selling Pressure: From the disclosed data, a total of 7,651 investors and 17,446 bids participated, but the briefing did not provide more granular information such as regional distribution or institutional proportion, making it impossible to accurately assess the long-term holding tendencies and concentration of chips. What can be confirmed is that a structure with many bids and wide distribution typically leads to a higher short-term liquidity dispersion of chips. On one hand, this is conducive to forming active trading depth; on the other hand, it also means that in the absence of lock-up and coordination mechanisms, early prices are more susceptible to amplification effects from localized concentrated selling.
● Discrepancy Between Public Sale Success and Price Performance: Historically, most projects that experience "oversubscription in public sales/IEOs" often exhibit high volatility during the opening phase. Even if the fundraising phase is "sold out in seconds" or the scale is considerable, it does not automatically equate to sustained strength in the secondary market. Common risks include: expectations being overdrawn in advance, profit-taking quickly exiting after unlocking, and macro sentiment fluctuations. Zama's hot public sale is also unlikely to escape this general rule, and the market will need to use actual trading data after February 2 to correct the optimistic expectations formed based on subscription data.
Capital Competition in Privacy Protocols: Zama's Scale Signal
● Comparison with Leading Privacy Projects: In terms of scale, Zama's public sale raised $121.25 million, reaching the total scale of several rounds of financing or public sales of leading privacy projects in the past. Although the briefing did not provide precise data on other projects for direct comparison, in the current market context of greater caution and overall contraction of primary funds, such a single round scale itself shows a clear increase in capital towards privacy, representing a leap in scale compared to earlier "millions to tens of millions of dollars" trial sizes.
● Shift in Capital Allocation Logic: Early on, privacy protocols were more viewed as "ideologically driven" niche attempts, with capital allocation leaning towards experimental and hedging attributes. Now, they are gradually evolving towards "necessary infrastructure." Zama's ability to secure over $100 million in a single public sale essentially reflects a collective endorsement of the assumption of "rigid demand for privacy layers in future large-scale applications"—capital is no longer just betting on a single independent application but is betting on an underlying capability that could support multiple sectors and applications.
● Demonstration Effect on Sector Valuation and Rhythm: The results of Zama's public sale are likely to form a new reference for valuation and fundraising scale within the privacy sector, leading subsequent similar projects to use "hundred million dollar scale" as a psychological anchor in pricing, financing round design, and fundraising target setting. At the same time, a successful public sale may encourage some projects to accelerate their public issuance pace, aiming to capitalize while the heat of the privacy narrative is still on the rise. However, this also means that competition within the sector will evolve from a simple technical contest to "who can tell a sufficiently convincing story at the right time and match funding needs."
A Calm Reminder Beyond Data: Heat Does Not Equal Certainty
● No Predictions on Future Prices: Although Zama's public sale data is impressive and the fundraising scale is considerable, making any quantitative predictions about its future price, yield, or market capitalization without richer fundamental and trading structure information is not rigorous. This article only organizes market reactions and risk frameworks based on disclosed data and does not involve any specific price judgments, nor should it be seen as an endorsement of optimistic or pessimistic positions regarding subsequent secondary market performance.
● Information Gaps and Judgment Limitations: Currently, the publicly available information does not provide key details such as the regional distribution of participating investors, the ratio of institutions to individuals, or chip concentration, leading to inherent limitations for external observers when assessing chip stability, long-term lock-up willingness, and potential sources of selling pressure. Even though the fundraising scale and number of participants are visible, the lack of these structural data makes any conclusions about "high/low proportion of long-term holders" or "institution-led/retail-led" difficult to stand firm. Investment decisions should maintain sufficient vigilance regarding this incomplete information.
● Distinction Between Long-term Demand and Short-term Sentiment: The long-term demand for privacy technology in the market comes more from the evolution of the regulatory environment, enterprise and institutional application scenarios, and on-chain data security requirements, while the high heat during the public sale phase may be driven to a considerable extent by short-term speculative sentiment. The two do not necessarily synchronize: a direction with long-term technical value may also experience multiple price and sentiment cycles; conversely, high valuations driven by short-term sentiment may not translate into long-term robust ecological construction results. Investors need to clearly differentiate between these two driving forces.
Understanding the Next Steps in the Privacy Sector from a Public Sale
Zama's public sale, with fundraising exceeding $120 million, over 7,600 participants, and tokens available for collection on February 2, has released several key signals about the privacy sector: first, capital is willing to make high-intensity bets in the direction of privacy infrastructure; second, the broad participation structure and numerous bids indicate significant competition for chip acquisition; third, the "subscription—token collection—circulation" time rhythm is relatively tight, laying the groundwork for short-term market volatility. Following this thread, it can be seen that privacy protocols are gradually moving from marginal narratives to being treated as serious asset classes by mainstream capital. Zama is just one representative, but its public sale scale and market response undoubtedly reinforce the consensus that "the privacy layer is expected to become the next generation of infrastructure puzzle."
Looking ahead to the upcoming mid-to-long-term phase, the actual direction of the privacy sector will be shaped by three forces: on the regulatory side, there will continue to be a search for a new balance between "transparency" and "privacy rights," determining which forms of privacy technology can be widely adopted; on the technical side, more practical, integrable solutions that can be used by mainstream developers need to be presented, embedding privacy capabilities into various applications; on the capital side, there will be continuous adjustments to valuation frameworks through multiple rounds of successes and failures and price fluctuations, raising higher demands for the technical content, compliance potential, and business models of projects. Zama's public sale is just a starting point in the capital competition for privacy, and what truly determines the height of the sector will be the long-term game between technological implementation, compliance exploration, and capital patience in the coming years.
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