About & Methodology
Privacy loves company. The larger the anonymity set, the stronger the privacy guarantees.
Total private value serves as a proxy for anonymity set weight. A privacy pool with ₿10,000 (~$760M) provides stronger guarantees than one with ₿10 (~$760K) - there's simply more crowd to hide in.
This isn't a perfect measure (underlying tech, number of users, transaction volume, value distribution, entropy quality, deterministic linkage, and other factors matter too), but it's a useful signal for the overall health of private cryptocurrency.
Chain surveillance firms exploit predictable patterns to deanonymize transactions:
The strongest privacy systems eliminate these attack surfaces by design — hiding amounts, breaking transaction graphs, and making all transactions indistinguishable from each other.
We track private digital cash — cryptocurrencies where you can send and receive value without exposing your balance, amount, or identity on-chain. Either the entire coin is private by default, or there's a measurable privacy pool where users opt in.
We don't track privacy infrastructure (mixnets, VPNs), computational privacy (shielded smart contracts with transparent tokens), or data privacy platforms. The focus is money that moves privately between people.
Private by default (14): Beam, Beldex, Epic Cash, Grin, Monero, MimbleWimbleCoin, Nerva, Pirate Chain, Secret Network, Tari, Wownero, XELIS, Zano, Zephyr Protocol
Privacy pools & protocols (10):
*Compliance/censorship features (interface-level, optional — Aztec, Firo, Railgun). MimbleWimble projects have known linkability limitations. Secret Network uses TEE (hardware trust, not cryptography). See caveats below.
Cryptocurrencies where all transactions are private. Full market cap = private value.
Where CoinGecko reports no circulating supply, we value the asset from fully diluted valuation instead — currently MimbleWimbleCoin (since Oct 2026). For MWC total mined is close to circulating and there is no locked premine, so the two figures are close.
| Project | Privacy Tech | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Beam (BEAM) | MimbleWimble + LelantusMW | Privacy by default. MimbleWimble with LelantusMW shielded pool (one-out-of-many proofs). Dandelion++ for network-layer privacy. Confidential assets support. 20% block reward treasury (first 5 years, now BeamX DAO). 2026 crisis: a Bulletproofs rangeproof vulnerability confirmed Jun 13; emergency Hard Fork Six Jul 1; a "Lustration Proposal" then offered a one-time privacy-breaking disclosure of legacy outputs to prove no inflation (pending DAO vote, silent since Jul 28). Market confidence collapsed. Paper |
| Beldex (BDX) | Ring Signatures + RingCT + Stealth Addresses | Monero fork. Switched from PoW to PoS with masternode consensus (12-node groups, 30s blocks). Functions more as a privacy services ecosystem than peer-to-peer digital cash — bulk of network activity flows through BelNet VPN, BChat messenger, and Beldex Browser rather than value transfer. Token migration BDX → $BELDEX underway (announced Oct 2026) — check current status before relying on market data. Paper |
| Epic Cash (EPIC) | MimbleWimble | Triple PoW: RandomX (CPU, 48%), ProgPow (GPU, 48%), CuckAToo31+ (ASIC, 4%) with independent difficulty per algorithm. 21M hard cap with Bitcoin-style halvings. Tor bundled natively for all node communication. Paper |
| Grin (GRIN) | MimbleWimble | No addresses. Cut-through removes spent outputs. Pedersen commitments. Cuckatoo32+ PoW (memory-bound). Linear emission of 1 GRIN/second forever — no supply cap. No premine, no ICO, community-donation funded. Paper |
| MimbleWimbleCoin (MWC) | MimbleWimble | Grin fork. Hard-capped at 20M supply (vs Grin's infinite emission). 6M airdropped to BTC holders. Cuckatoo C31 PoW. Essentially a ghost chain — sizable market cap but very low on-chain activity (low double-digit daily transactions). Value shown is fully diluted valuation — CoinGecko reports no circulating supply for MWC since Oct 2026. Paper |
| Monero (XMR) | Ring Signatures (CLSAG) + RingCT + Stealth Addresses + Bulletproofs+ | Gold standard. CLSAG ring signatures hide sender, RingCT hides amounts, stealth addresses hide recipient. FCMP++ replaces ring signatures with full-chain membership proofs — third beta stressnet forked Oct 2026, mainnet fork height not yet set. Zcash took the larger market cap in the 2026 ZEC run, but Monero still out-transacts it roughly 4-5x daily. Paper |
| Navio (NAV) | BLSCT (Confidential Transactions + Spark-style outputs) + Proof-of-Private-Stake | Navcoin's successor. Mandatory privacy — no transparent addresses exist; BLSCT hides amounts and output linkage (Spark-derived). PoPS, the distinguishing feature: stake with hidden staking amounts via blind signatures — the only mandatory-private PoS chain in production. Mainnet since Jul 2026 (v0.2.2 Sep 2026, chain-stall bug fixed Sep 5). Optional view keys. Wrapped NAV exists on BSC — bridge events are correlation surfaces. Site |
| Nerva (XNV) | Ring Signatures + RingCT + Stealth Addresses | CryptoNote/Monero fork, private by default. CPU-only solo mining (Cryptonight Adaptive), no pools allowed — truly decentralized mining. Community revival underway: active core releases (v0.2.1.0 Apr 2026, v0.2.2.0 May 2026) after a 2.5yr gap, NervaOne wallet and Nerva Quest platform. Tail emission ~0.83%. Smaller cap and limited exchange liquidity. No formal whitepaper (CryptoNote-derived). Docs |
| Pirate Chain (ARRR) | zk-SNARKs (Zcash Sapling) | Shielded-only Zcash Sapling fork. No transparent addresses allowed. Komodo dPoW notarizes to Litecoin for 51% attack resistance. Skip-genesis transition completed — Ironwood + dPoW coordinated hardfork activated Oct 3 2026. Oct 14 2026: turnstile exploit — ~39.8M ARRR minted (~20% of supply, ~$10.7M). A validation flaw in Ironwood's new supply-accounting layer (not the shielded cryptography) let a transaction create coins that entered the Sapling pool untraceably. A proposed rollback was withdrawn as infeasible; dPoW notarizations were suspended and exchanges paused ARRR while recovery is weighed. Same lesson as Zcash's Orchard episode: a turnstile only protects supply if every path into the pool goes through it. Paper |
| Secret Network (SCRT) | TEE (Intel SGX) | Private value transfer via encrypted computation in secure enclaves. Token transfers hide sender, receiver, and amount. Privacy is real but hardware-dependent (see caveats). 2026 status change: SCRT Labs ended support for the Cosmos chain Sep 1, minted ~1.079B SCRT for a migration to an Arbitrum ERC-20 (~75% dilution), and pivoted to confidential-AI infrastructure. Binance delisted Sep 3. Paper |
| Tari (XTM) | MimbleWimble | Monero merge-mined (RandomX + SHA3x dual mining). MimbleWimble with Pedersen commitments and cut-through for private, scalable L1. L2 Ootle uses Cerberus sharded BFT for sub-second finality. Burn XTM to mint XTR for L2 dapps. RFCs |
| Wownero (WOW) | Ring Signatures + RingCT + Stealth Addresses | Monero fork. Ring size 22. RandomWOW (lite RandomX, 1MB scratchpad). Fixed 184M supply with no tail emission. No premine. Paper |
| XELIS (XEL) | Homomorphic Encryption (ElGamal) | BlockDAG with private amounts and balances via ElGamal homomorphic encryption. Smart contracts with encrypted execution. Built in Rust. Paper |
| Zano (ZANO) | Ring Signatures (CLSAG) + Stealth Addresses + Bulletproofs+ | Founded by Andrey Sabelnikov (crypto_zoidberg), who wrote the original CryptoNote implementation Monero forked from. Evolved from Boolberry (2014). Hybrid PoW/PoS. Confidential assets support; fUSD (Freedom Dollar) private stablecoin live. Value = native market cap + non-native TVL (fUSD and wrapped assets). Opt-in Auditable Wallets (aZx) expose full balance/history view keys; auditable outputs are flagged on-chain and excluded from the decoy pool. Regular wallets (Zx) are fully private. Punches above its weight on-chain — daily tx counts rival much larger networks. 2026 incident: a Gateway Address flaw (shipped with Hard Fork 6) let an attacker mint 36.9M unauthorized ZANO plus fUSD, undetected for a month. The chain was rolled back to block 3,833,000 on Sep 27 2026 — one month of history erased — and HF7 disabled Gateway Addresses pending review. Transaction privacy and wallet keys were not compromised; claims/reimbursement announced, not yet published. Paper |
| Zephyr Protocol (ZEPH) | Ring Signatures + RingCT + Stealth Addresses | Monero fork. Three-asset Djed variant: ZEPH (RandomX PoW base), ZSD (stablecoin, 400% min collateral), ZRS (reserve shares absorb volatility for fees/leverage). Dual oracles (spot + moving average). All conversions fully private. Paper |
Systems where privacy is optional. We track value in private pools, not total market cap.
| Project | Privacy Tech | What We Track |
|---|---|---|
| Aztec (ETH)* | zk-SNARKs (Honk/UltraPlonk) | Privacy L2 rollup on Ethereum. Honk proving system (evolved PLONK) with UltraPlonk for on-chain verification. Noir smart contract language. Ignition Chain mainnet Nov 2025; Alpha V5 live Jul 2026 (cheaper private txs). An internal V5 proving-system vulnerability surfaced days after launch — funds treated as exposed until Alpha V6 (targeted late 2026). Nyx (relaunched zk.money) shipped Sep 2026 as the first app on the upgraded L2. Early-stage — TVS is still small and ramping. Note: this is the current L2, distinct from the deprecated Aztec Connect bridge, which was exploited Jun 2026. *See caveats. PLONK Paper |
| Dash PrivateSend (DASH) | CoinJoin (PrivateSend) + Orchard shielded pool (opt-in) | Previously known as Darkcoin, pioneered CoinJoin mixing. Tracks DASH PrivateSend unspent capacity using 5 fixed denominations. ~10% of supply in PrivateSend UTXOs, though less than 1% of transactions use it. Chainalysis claims 99% traceability and 40%+ de-anonymization rate (ESORICS 2021). Opt-in shielded pool (live Jul 2026): Dash Platform now runs an Orchard shielded pool (Halo 2 proofs, no trusted setup) that hides amounts, senders, and recipients while keeping the pool total, note count, anchors, and nullifiers public. Tracked in two places — PrivateSend capacity in the CoinJoin section, shielded pool value in the Zero-Knowledge section; the home page combines both. Paper |
| Decred CSPP (DCR) | CoinShuffle++ | DCR mixed via decentralized CoinShuffle++ protocol. % of supply shown (~66%). Aug 2026's mandatory v2.1.6 release fixed a periodic mixing deanonymization attack alongside a consensus bug. Paper |
| Firo Spark (FIRO)* | Lelantus Spark (zk-SNARKs, no trusted setup) | FIRO in the Spark shielded pool. Privacy is opt-in — Firo has both transparent and Spark supply. Tracking only the Spark balance (currently ~6% of supply) via Firo's Insight explorer API. Spark addresses hide amounts and are unsearchable on-chain. Spark Assets (live Nov 2025) enables private token creation sharing the same anonymity pool. Aug 2026's Spark view-key vulnerability required a mandatory hard fork (v0.14.18.0, ~Sep 4 2026) restoring the full anonymity set. *See caveats. Paper |
| Litecoin MWEB (LTC) | MimbleWimble Extension Blocks | LTC pegged into MW extension blocks. ~445K LTC locked, 90%+ node validation. % of supply shown. LitVM (EVM sidechain on MWEB) targeted for mainnet Q4 2026. LIP-0003 |
| Railgun (ETH)* | zk-SNARKs (Groth16) | 54 zk-SNARK circuits with trusted setup. TVL across chains: Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, BSC (4 chains). Shielded DeFi balances. Integrated into Ethereum Foundation Kohaku toolkit. *See caveats. Docs |
| Samourai Whirlpool (BTC) | ZeroLink CoinJoin | Unspent BTC capacity in pools. ZeroLink collaborative transactions with equal outputs, 5+ participants, 100% entropy. Founders sentenced Nov 2025 (5yr/4yr). Original infrastructure seized. Theory |
| Ashigaru Whirlpool (BTC) | ZeroLink CoinJoin | Samourai fork continuing Whirlpool after arrests. Same protocol, separate liquidity pool. |
| Tornado Cash | zk-SNARKs (Groth16) | TVL across chains: Ethereum, BSC, Avalanche, OP Mainnet, Arbitrum, Polygon, Gnosis, Ethereum Classic (8 chains). Fixed-denomination deposits with trusted setup. OFAC sanctions lifted March 2025. Roman Storm convicted Aug 2025 (money transmission); acquitted on sanctions. Retrial on money laundering scheduled Apr 2027. Paper |
| Zcash Shielded (ZEC) | zk-SNARKs (Halo 2) | ZEC in shielded pools: Sprout (legacy), Sapling (Groth16), Orchard (Halo 2 - no trusted setup), Ironwood (active pool, opened by NU6.3 Jul 28 2026). % of supply shown (live on tracker; ~29%). 20% Founders Reward (first 4 years), ongoing dev fund from block rewards. NU6.2 (Jun 2026) patched a critical Orchard soundness flaw — no exploit observed, but pre-patch minting can't be cryptographically ruled out; Orchard was sealed at the subsequent Ironwood activation (NU6.3) and its migration audit proves supply integrity as funds drain through the turnstile (~90% done by mid-Oct 2026, no anomaly). Zcash's market cap is now meaningfully larger than Monero's, but daily transactions run ~4-5x lower, and only ~29% of supply is shielded. Spec |
Projects marked with * have optional compliance/audit features built in:
Why we still track these: These are interface-level compliance features, not protocol-level censorship. These features exist at the application layer, not the protocol layer. The underlying privacy guarantees remain intact.
These aren't compliance backdoors, but protocol trade-offs worth understanding:
Notable protocol-level incidents from tracked projects — full details are in the project rows above:
We include all these projects because they still provide meaningful privacy, but users should understand the trade-offs.
Projects we're monitoring for potential inclusion:
| Project | Privacy Tech | Status |
|---|---|---|
| CashFusion (BCH) | CoinJoin | Privacy mixing on BCH. Looking for active liquidity or TVL metric. |
| Cloak (SOL)* | Stealth Addresses + zk-SNARKs (Groth16) | Solana privacy pools with stealth addresses and ZK proofs. Permissionless, decentralized relayers. Optional viewing keys. Needs TVL metric. |
| Conceal (CCX) | CryptoNote (CN-GPU) | Private-by-default CryptoNote coin. CN-GPU PoW + cold staking (lock periods for 2.9-6% interest). Encrypted on-chain messaging. Not a zombie — 10+ repos pushed in 2026, single core dev (Acktarius) but broad ecosystem (wallet, explorer, pool, faucet). v6.7.3 released Aug 2025. ~₿3.5 market cap, NonKyc only. Very small but genuinely maintained. Kept on watch — re-visit on new exchange listing. |
| Crest (Citrea, BTC) | zk privacy pools on Citrea (Bitcoin ZK-rollup) | Pre-launch watch: self-custodial private Bitcoin mobile wallet acquired by Citrea (Sep 2026) — auto-shielding, private BTC transfers, private cross-chain exits (pay EVM addresses from shielded BTC). Citrea mainnet live since Jan 2026. Key open question: mechanics. Citrea/Chainway created the Proof of Innocence protocol (Railgun/Privacy Pools lineage) and markets "mathematical compliance" — if the shielded pool enforces an association set in-circuit (0xBow-style), this fails our bar; if PoI stays opt-in interface-level (Railgun-style), it earns an asterisk at most. Watch until contracts launch, then re-audit before considering tracked. Site |
| Particl (PART) | CT + RingCT + Stealth Addresses + Bulletproofs | Privacy is opt-in via three balance types (public, blind, anon). Tracking full market cap overstates the private portion. Need either a public API exposing blind+anon supply only, or to run a Particl full node ourselves with a scraper/calculator that pulls balance-type data via RPC. Paper |
| Dero (DERO) | Homomorphic Encryption (DERO-HE) | Custom DERO Homomorphic Encryption Blockchain Protocol (DHEBP). All transactions and smart contracts operate on encrypted data. Not open source — uses a custom Research License that prohibits commercial use without separate agreement. Single anonymous developer ("Captain"), no independent cryptographic audit. Interesting tech but unverifiable trust model for a privacy coin. Paper |
| Ghost Privacy (GHOST) | RingCT (Particl fork) | McAfee-era Particl fork with RingCT + Confidential Transactions, PoS. Zero commits since Feb 2024 (sole dev bleach86). Dandelion++/Bulletproofs++ roadmap claims — no code exists. Chain running on PoS stakers. ~₿8 market cap, ~$268 daily volume, TradeOgre only. X account active, gets community questions. Monitoring. |
| GhostwareOS (GHOST)* | Unverified (Solana) | Whitepaper describes zk-SNARKs, stealth addresses, and on-chain shielding pool (GhostVault) — but admits "still in prototype stage" with testing on devnet only. No custom Solana programs deployed on mainnet, no public GitHub, no deployed program IDs. GhostPay/GhostSwap route through HoudiniSwap (mandatory OFAC/AML, Tor blocking, geo-blocking, 72hr data retention). Gap between whitepaper vision and actual deployment is significant. |
| Penumbra (UM) | Multi-Asset Shielded Pool (zk-SNARKs) | Fully shielded by default. Private staking, ZSwap DEX (sealed-bid batch auctions). IBC-compatible (first non-Cosmos-SDK chain with IBC). Multi-asset shielded pool (any IBC token). Penumbra Labs wound down April 2025; no code output since v2.1.1 (Jan 2026). The largest multi-asset shielded pool outside Zcash's own pools (~$3.77M TVS, ~66% shielded). Monitoring — recheck when the chain's next steps become clearer; inclusion is historical rather than forward-looking. Spec |
| PIVX (PIVX)* | zk-SNARKs (Zcash Sapling) | Optional SHIELD privacy. Only 1% of supply shielded (~0.75M PIV, ~₿0.7). Can't stake while shielded, disincentivizing use. v6.0 planned: shielded staking could grow pool. Full compliance toolkit. Monitoring for v6.0 impact and growth. Shield supply chart. |
| Ryo Currency (RYO) | RingCT (CryptoNote, ring size 25) + one-time ghost addresses | CryptoNote privacy coin since Apr 2017 — no premine/ICO, 20-year plateau emission, Cryptonight-GPU PoW (ASIC-resistant, home-GPU friendly). Private by default, nothing optional, no compliance features. Its dev (fireice_uk) wrote the "Tracing Cryptonote" research series (Knacc attack, graph analysis) that informed Monero's own hardening; several Ryo security fixes were adopted upstream by Monero. Halo 2 zk-proof migration announced but not shipped yet. Micro-cap (~$194K, ~₿1.6, ~$33-119/day volume, nonKYC/CEXSwap only) — kept on watch for the zk upgrade; re-visit on Halo 2 landing or liquidity growth. Site |
| Tacit (BTC/ETH) | Confidential Transactions (Pedersen) + zk (Bulletproofs+/SP1) + CoinJoin-style mixer | Confidential DeFi rooted on Bitcoin: Pedersen notes hide amounts; immutable Ethereum ConfidentialPool (no trusted setup, no proxy/admin), trustless SP1 burn→mint Bitcoin↔Ethereum bridge (no multisig/attestors), cBTC conservation-bounded wrapped BTC, cUSD confidential dollar, gasless relayer ops. TAC: fixed 21M supply, airdrop-only. Hides amounts only — Bitcoin address graph, asset ID and tx graph remain visible (Liquid-CT-scope). Single dev (z0r0z); all audits are AI-model rounds (GPT-5.5 Pro/Claude Opus 4.8), no traditional audit firm. No ASPs, no view-key registry, no relayer screening. TVL ~$76K (DefiLlama `tacit`); no token listing — watch until it grows. Site |
| Serai DEX (SRI) | Cross-chain Private Swaps | Decentralized exchange for private coins. Still in development. |
| XEQMLabs (XEQM) | Ring Signatures + RingCT + Stealth Addresses (Monero-derived) | CryptoNote/Monero-derived chain (formerly Equilibria) migrating PoW→PoS via "Horizon" fork. Fixed ~276M XEQM supply. Service-node staking model. Markets itself as a developer platform exposing privacy primitives (identity, data, comms, governance, payments) via API. Site |
These projects use privacy tech (ZK proofs, TEEs, mixnets) but not for private value transfer. They're infrastructure, computation platforms, or messaging tokens — not digital cash.
| Project | Issue |
|---|---|
| Midnight (NIGHT) | Not a privacy coin. NIGHT (value token) is fully transparent. DUST (shielded token) is non-transferable — cannot be used as private currency. Privacy computation platform for data/smart contracts, not value transfer. Hoskinson: "Midnight is not a privacy coin." Compliance note: Markets itself as "compliance-ready, privacy-first." Three-tier disclosure architecture (public/auditor/god view). Federated mainnet validators include MoneyGram, eToro, Vodafone. Entry Foundation integration for MiCA/FATF compliance. Disclosure is app-level (not protocol-forced), keeping it short of our compliance coin threshold for now — but the posture is clearly institutional/regulatory. |
| Nym (NYM) | Mixnet privacy infrastructure (incentivized Tor). NYM token is transparent — privacy is at the network layer (mixing internet packets), not value transfer. No shielded pool or private value to measure. |
| Oasis Network (ROSE) | Enterprise confidential computing, not a privacy coin. ROSE transfers are fully transparent — all balances and transactions visible in explorer. Uses TEEs for data privacy in smart contracts, but no private value transfer. Same tech family as Secret Network, but Secret encrypts money; Oasis only encrypts compute. |
| Session (SESH) | Privacy messenger token. OXEN (privacy coin) deprecated May 2025, migrated to SESH — an Ethereum-compatible token for Session messenger. Team explicitly states "not a privacy coin." |
| Project | Issue |
|---|---|
| Wasabi Wallet (BTC) | CoinJoin (WabiSabi). Not ZeroLink — deterministic links, peel chains, poor entropy, unverifiable anon set, no change segregation, no pre/post-mix segregation, no free remixing. No measurable pool metrics. Proactively blacklisted UTXOs via chain surveillance integration. zkSNACKs shut down June 2024. See also: Compliance Coins. |
| JoinMarket (BTC) | CoinJoin market with maker/taker model. Not ZeroLink — deterministic linkage between inputs and outputs, peel chains, mediocre entropy. No measurable pool metrics or active liquidity data. |
| Lightning Network (BTC) | Scaling solution, not a privacy protocol. Invoices expose node pubkey which links to IP, channel balances, on-chain fingerprints, and tx history from channel opens/closes. Routing nodes observe payment flows. Probing attacks reveal exact balances. Chainalysis offers LN surveillance to exchanges and government agencies (FBI, IRS, DEA). Network highly centralized — empirical analysis shows a small set of hubs attracts most routing traffic and centrality has been increasing over time (Gini index +10% in 2 years, Zabka et al. 2022). Those hubs gain a privileged surveillance view of payment flows. Most wallets custodial. See also: Empirical Analysis of Privacy in LN, Cross-Layer Deanonymization. |
| Verge (XVG) | Tor/I2P for IP obfuscation + optional stealth addresses, but blockchain is fully transparent. No private value to track. |
We exclude projects with mandatory protocol-level compliance. These aren't privacy tools with optional compliance - they're surveillance infrastructure with optional privacy theater.
| Project | Issue |
|---|---|
| Aleo (ALEO) | View keys baked into every account by design. Account View Key reveals ALL transactions past and future. ARC-0100 governance proposal passed for OFAC screening on bridges. a16z, Sequoia backed. |
| Aleph Zero (AZERO) | Anonymity Revokers designed into protocol — governance can trigger deanonymization. Coinfirm AML integration active. "Compliant privacy" is their own term. |
| Concordium (CCD) | Protocol-level mandatory identity — cannot create account without verified ID. Removed shielded transactions under regulatory pressure. Partners with ABN Amro, Fidelity, Standard Chartered. |
| COTI (COTI) | CEO stated "100% anonymous is illegal." Bank of Israel Digital Shekel finalist. ECB Digital Euro Pioneer Partner. V2 mainnet March 2025 with Garbled Circuits for selective disclosure. |
| Dusk (DUSK) | "Zero-Knowledge Compliance" is their tagline. Team says "not a privacy coin." Platform purpose is tokenized securities (XSC) with mandatory KYC. MiCA-compliant. NPEX integrated. Mainnet Jan 7, 2026. |
| Horizen (ZEN) | Migrated to Base L3 (July–Dec 2025). Shielded pools deprecated at consensus level (ZenIP 42204). All privacy features removed. Now "regulatory-compliant privacy" via selective disclosure on Solidity frameworks. |
| NEAR Confidential Mode | Team-operated Intel TDX TEE shard, not cryptographic shielded pools. Selective disclosure shipped as a feature (COTI precedent); operator trust is non-optional. Sep 2026 NEAR Intents SHIELD froze $503K of Bitget-hack funds mid-execution. Rejection targets the Confidential facility, not base NEAR. Revisit only if disclosure becomes strictly user-controlled, the shard decentralizes beyond NEAR's team, and SHIELD-style screening is decoupled. |
| Privacy Cash (SOL) | Solana mixer with CipherOwl address screening at deposit layer — flagged wallets rejected by relayer. Selective disclosure/view keys for regulators. Anonymous team, no whitepaper. |
| Privacy Pools (ETH) | Association Set Providers gate withdrawals — must prove deposit is in "clean" set. Paper co-authored by Vitalik Buterin and Chainalysis. Coinbase Ventures backed. Compliance is the mechanism, not optional. |
| Starknet (STRK) | STRK20 privacy standard (March 2026) requires mandatory viewing keys — users register encrypted viewing key on-chain, "designated third-party auditing entities" can decrypt and trace full transaction history bidirectionally. Centralized sequencer (all 3 run by StarkWare). 9/12 Security Council can instant-upgrade rollup contracts. Paradigm, Sequoia, Coinbase backed ($273M+). ZK proofs used for selective surveillance, not privacy. |
| Wasabi Wallet (BTC) | Proactively blacklisted UTXOs via chain analysis integration "with no legislation requiring them to do so." zkSNACKs shut down June 2024. See also: Insufficient Privacy. |
Data refreshes approximately every 90 seconds.