The list continues to grow. Sui, zkSync, Polygon, and Solana are all built as fully transparent public networks, and all four now have sensitive transactions added. Cardano’s new Midnight sidechain is doing the same for its ecosystem. The goal is not anonymity. Privacy is something banks, auditors and regulators can approve of.
Why are they suddenly trying to hide their transactions?
Public blockchains are built on transparency. Everyone can read all balances and all transfers. That has been a selling point for many years. This is currently a barrier for institutions that have been working on cryptocurrencies in 2025. Banks don’t run payroll, move finances, or process customer payments on a ledger that competitors can monitor in real time. Tokenized encrypted real-world assets stable coin Flow and compliance DeFi We need a way to keep the amounts and counterparties private while proving that the calculations are correct.
The common denominator is confidentiality rather than anonymity. Transaction details are hidden from the public while the network can verify them, and most of these chains allow users to reveal certain data to auditors and regulators if necessary. This is privacy built for regulated finance, not to circumvent finance.
Public chain will be classified
Four networks are driving this trend, each with different approaches and different stages of progress.
Sui
Co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun Confirmed June 5th, Sui (@SuiNetwork) Confidential transfer will take place this year. According to Abiodun, the feature uses range proofing to hide the transferred amount while forcing supply, so fraudulent minting remains impossible by design. This sits within a broader 2026 roadmap that already includes gasless stablecoin transfers on a network that has processed over $1 trillion in stablecoin volume since August 2025. No clear start date is given.
zkSync
Matter Labs has built an organizational effort around Prividium, a private permission chain running as Validium. Execution and data remain off-chain in institution-managed infrastructure, and only zero-knowledge proofs settle on Ethereum. The first production environment, Memento ZK Chain, was built in collaboration with Deutsche Bank. Another initiative, the Cali Network, is bringing in five regional U.S. banks with more than $600 billion in combined deposits, with a pilot targeted for the third quarter of 2026.
polygon
In May, Polygon (@0x polygon) has added a privacy configuration to its chain development kit, allowing institutions to launch private chains that leverage public liquidity through AggLayer. Built at Succinct Labs, this setup keeps raw transaction data within institutionally owned infrastructure and only sends cryptographic commitments and proofs to Ethereum. The principle that Polygon reiterates is private data, public verification. This fits in with the company’s Open Money Stack framework, which is exiting beta on the zkEVM mainnet.
Solana
@Solana Arrived here first, but with an asterisk. Its secure transfers used homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to hide transfer amounts and balances, and were shipped within the Token-2022 standard, with an optional audit key for compliance. The problem is that the ZK ElGamal proof program this feature relies on has been disabled on mainnet since mid-2025 after researchers discovered a flaw that could have allowed valid proofs to be forged. Confidential transport cannot be used on live networks at this time, as it remains disabled pending a security audit.
Where does Midnight fit in?
Midnight is not a public chain that values privacy. This is a new privacy-first sidechain that extends Cardano. On March 31, 2026, we launched a federated mainnet with Google and Vodafone as node operators. It uses a dual token model with NIGHT for governance and DUST for transaction costs, as well as a proprietary language for confidential smart contracts. Founder Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) called this approach “reasonable privacy” and made it clear that Midnight is not going after Monero users. It incorporates selective disclosure for financial, medical, and identity purposes rather than anonymity.
Who else is doing this?
The above names are the most noisy examples, not the entire field. in $XRP ledger, @Ripple The researchers proposed a confidential token standard, XLS-0096, which uses EC-ElGamal encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to encrypt the balance of issued assets and the amount transferred, while disclosing the total supply. This is a proposal that is still going through the process of fixing XRPL, but contributors were pushing it again as recently as this week.
This impulse predates 2026. Litecoin (@litecoin) added optional confidential transactions through MimbleWimble Extension Blocks in 2022, and $BTC payments routed through the Lightning Network are now completely off the main ledger, with most of the details hidden from public view as a byproduct of the off-chain transition. Privacy is no longer a niche field pursued by a few dedicated coins. This is becoming a feature that almost all serious networks expect to offer.
Original private by default
Against all of this is a group of chains that have treated privacy as the default since day one.
- Monero ($XMR) hides the sender, recipient, and amount of every transaction through ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT. There is no opt-out. Its purity is also a problem. Exchanges such as Binance and OKX have delisted the company, and it primarily trades in regulated off-exchange locations. The FCMP++ upgrade, currently available on the beta test network, replaces ring signatures with full-chain membership proofs, further expanding the anonymity set.
- Zcash ($ZEC) offers a choice. Transactions can be transparent or secured with zk-SNARKs, with key visibility allowing selective disclosure. That flexibility has allowed the company to overtake Monero in market capitalization in late 2025 and offer a cleaner story for its regulated products, but the recently revealed Orchard Component vulnerability has tested its confidence.
- Canton (@CantonNetwork) is the institutional way of thinking about private buy default. Built for regulated finance, transaction details are visible only to those involved. DTCC is tokenizing US government bonds. JP Morgan is popularizing its deposit token. Visa then joined as a super validator in March, making it one of 55 companies currently helping manage the network.
Confidentiality and anonymity are the real difference
Categorizing these chains as public or private misses the real divide. Adding privacy Public chains and institutional natives like cantons are converging on one model: encrypting details, maintaining public verifiability, and allowing selective disclosure. The really different animals are Monero and, if protected, Zcash. The point here is to make transactions not just confidential, but unlinkable.
This difference determines who can use what. Banks rely on Sui, zkSync, Polygon, and Canton because their confidential design preserves composability, liquidity, and a route through compliance. As Monero’s delisting proved, forced anonymity buys greater privacy at the expense of exchange access and liquidity.
Chain companies going after financial institutions are betting that selective disclosure will be enough. Is a network that is always accessible to appropriate authorities considered private, or transparent to a small audience?
source of information
- ZKsync Prividium documentation Learn how the Prividium Private Validium Chain locks proof in Ethereum while keeping data off-chain.
- Polygon Labs Blog Describes CDK privacy configuration, AggLayer connectivity, and Open Money Stack.
- solana documentation Please note that the ZK ElGamal certificate program has been temporarily disabled on mainnet pending a security audit regarding the Confidential Transfer extension.
- canton network Main page about DTCC’s plan to tokenize cantonal government bonds.
