Andy
Co-Founder of The Rollup & The Rollup Ventures
Zama's programmable privacy can serve all of onchain finance without competing with other chains or applications, giving it an absolutely massive revenue opportunity. Unlike an L1, it enables privacy across the stack; this trend is only going to blow up over the next two years. x.comÂ
Zama is at the bleeding edge of onchain privacy and will keep taking the lion's share of private DeFi, now that confidential swaps on any asset across many chains are live. Per @randhindi, the Zama Confidential RFQ lets traders swap onchain without revealing size, asset or direction, ending MEV frontrunning that pushes large trades to dark pools and OTC desks. It is in private beta on Ethereum, with a public launch planned for September and multi-chain support after, aimed at institutions. x.comÂ
ZAMA could be the next coin to catch a bid if the privacy rotation spreads from privacy coins to the infrastructure powering confidential DeFi. Privacy keeps showing up in the coins pumping hardest, including iExec's RLC, NEAR with Confidential Intents, NIGHT and Starknet's STRK. Zama's FHE lets apps compute on encrypted data without decrypting it, giving it a direct place in that trade if the market pays up for confidential apps alongside private payments. x.com x.comÂ
Zcash's privacy is its lasting edge because bank accounts may never become private, while quantum resistance should become a requirement for all survivors. Its public transactions make institutional integration easier than Monero's, giving it a larger potential market. Monero has value and is probably oversold, though FCMP++ has no clear timeline. Institutions' comfort with Zcash could fade if governments clamp down. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
Zama brings encrypted computation to public blockchains, a capability five years in development and built by one of the world's most cited cryptographers. x.com x.comÂ
zkSync's collaboration with DTCC on Prividium privacy features strengthens the long-term bullish case for ZK by extending its institutional reach. Per zkSync, Matter Labs is providing privacy features as a collaborator on DTCC's Tokenization Service; DTCC handles custody and asset servicing for over $114 trillion in securities. x.com x.comÂ
The need for private transactions and untracked wallets could make privacy tokens one of crypto's biggest narratives over the next few years. Monero and Zcash are named alongside the not-yet-launched AF. x.comÂ
Private payment rails are becoming a competitive necessity, and the privacy sector could expand 7x as stablecoin rails mature and institutions demand confidential execution by default. Privacy coins reached a $17.9b market cap; Zcash's shielded pool holds about 30% of supply, with rising shielded activity and a price above $500, and Aztec leads L2s in GitHub activity with live programmable privacy. Private payments should take a growing share of on-chain volume over the next 24-36 months. x.comÂ
Privacy has a rare confluence of factors for exponential growth, an ideal setup for capital to concentrate in the leaders: Zcash in private money and Venice in private AI. Money and AI are probably the most important use cases for privacy, and their early leaders should compound into category-defining names. x.comÂ
Midnight's NIGHT token could catch the privacy rotation as Zcash draws attention to the category, while private apps give it a reason to stay relevant. Zcash focuses on private payments; Midnight lets developers build privacy into apps like lending and identity checks, which @IOHK_Charles says could make it bigger than Zcash, and contracts now deploy freely on mainnet. Holding NIGHT generates DUST to pay fees, so apps may buy it for users, provided people actually use them. x.comÂ
Real money is showing up for privacy, one of the biggest narratives this year, which is good news for Zcash. Per @MSBIntel, Grayscale's Zcash ETF has raised over $1 billion in 30 trading days, ranking among the best ETF launches of the last ten years. x.comÂ
Monero and Zcash could each reach $50-100B, but the best risk/reward in privacy may be the low-cap Knox token. Its offline transactions are the real innovation, making privacy work like cash, something no one has done before. At only a $26M market cap, it could reprice to $1B+. x.comÂ
