The Future of Confidentiality: 2026 Privacy Titans to watch out for.

With institutional demand for on-chain privacy hitting an all-time high, these tokenless (or pre-TGE) protocols are the ones to watch this year. Here is the current landscape of the industry's most heavily backed privacy engines.

Confidential Computing & FHE

* Arcium : Recently launched its mainnet Alpha on Solana. It provides a parallelized confidential computing network, allowing developers to run encrypted, verifiable computations without sacrificing performance.

* Raised: $4M (Coinbase Ventures, Anatoly Yakovenko, Greenfield).

* Inco : An EVM-compatible Layer 1 that uses Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to enable "composable" privacy, allowing apps to interact while keeping data encrypted.

* Raised: $10M (a16z, Circle, Coinbase Ventures).

* zCloak Network : A decentralized identity (DID) platform providing ZK-proofs-as-a-service. It enables self-sovereign data computation directly on user devices.

* Raised: $7.1M (Coinbase Ventures, IOSG, Hypersphere).

* Billions Network : A specialized DID platform designed for human-to-AI trust verification using ZK technology. Recently partnered with the Spanish Red Cross for private aid distribution.

* Raised: $35M (Coinbase Ventures, Polychain, Bitkraft).

Scaling & Layer 2 Privacy

* Aztec : The heavyweight of the space. Now transitioning toward its TGE (targeted for early 2026), this ZK-rollup brings smart contract privacy to Ethereum.

* Raised: $159M+ (Paradigm, a16z, Coinbase).

* Espresso Systems: Providing a shared sequencing layer that boosts both privacy and interoperability for L2s via BFT consensus.

* Raised: $63.9M (a16z, Electric Capital, StarkWare).

* Polygon Miden : A ZK-STARK based rollup that allows users to execute transactions locally, keeping the state private while scaling the Polygon ecosystem.

* Raised: $25M (a16z, 1kx, Sandeep Nailwal).

Note: Skiff (@skiffprivacy) was acquired by Notion and is being integrated into their productivity suite, marking a major exit for decentralized privacy tools.