4 predictions for privacy in 2026

Following a breakout year for on-chain privacy in 2025, driven by Zcash's success and major initiatives from Ethereum and Solana, five experts offered predictions for 2026. The consensus points toward privacy becoming more practical, moving beyond a binary state to incorporate necessary trade-offs for threat resistance. Khushi Wadhwa predicts private stablecoins will become a core layer of global payment infrastructure, embedding configurable privacy while integrating policy controls for compliance. Paul Brody anticipates that privacy technology will become industrialized, moving from testnet to production with solutions like Aztec and Nightfall, though challenges in wallet support and regulation remain. Finally, Wei Dai suggests that "threat-resistant" privacy—solutions designed to deter malicious actors—will become the accepted default, focusing on pragmatic implementations over purely idealistic guarantees.

(Source：CoinDesk)