Privacy tools have a UX problem. If staying private requires 14 settings, three extra apps, and a minor degree in cryptography... most people probably won’t bother. 😅 @EdgeWallet wants privacy to become the default, not another homework assignment. 🔐 We spoke with the Edge team about: 🌐 Making network privacy easier with NYM Mixnet 🪙 Bringing privacy to familiar assets with BTCx and BCHx 👤 Sending private Zcash payments using names instead of addresses 🔄 What’s still missing from cross-chain swaps 🥇 Tokenized gold, silver, and the trade-offs of RWAs 💸 Connecting self-custody with familiar payment rails The bigger idea? Privacy works better when you don’t need to be a privacy expert to use it. Read the full interview 🧠👇 #LetsPartner#

Vitalik Buterin Pushes Native Privacy For Ethereum Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) outlined three near term Ethereum $ETH upgrades aimed at making privacy a built in network feature. The proposals include account abstraction, FOCIL, keyed nonces, and new access layer privacy tools. The upgrades are designed to make private transactions harder to censor and reduce user tracking across the network.

Crypto spent the last few years treating privacy like a niche feature. That is starting to change. When @tether can freeze $300M worth of $USDT, and every public coin carries a permanent transaction history, the question becomes bigger than simply hiding what you do onchain. It becomes a question of fungibility. Can one dollar of internet-native money always be treated like another? The market appears to be paying attention again. Since $BTC’s October 2025 high, the privacy sector is up roughly 213%, while most major crypto sectors remain deeply underwater. And the resurgence is producing several very different approaches to private money. Here’s how the privacy stack is taking shape. — ● Privacy is ultimately a fungibility problem Stablecoins solved a major part of internet-native money. They made dollars programmable, global and transferable 24/7. But they did not remove the control layer. Issuer-backed assets can still be: • Frozen • Blacklisted • Traced • Restricted at the wallet level And even with decentralized assets, fully public transaction histories create another issue. A coin can inherit the history of everyone who previously owned it. That creates the possibility that two units of the same asset are treated differently because of where they came from. For money, that matters. Privacy -> stronger fungibility -> units that remain interchangeable regardless of transaction history. That is why privacy is not only about secrecy. It is also about the quality of the monetary asset itself. — ● The market is starting to reprice that idea Since Bitcoin’s October 2025 high, privacy assets have gained roughly 213%, while many other crypto sectors are down between 27% and 74%. $ZEC represents around 62% of the sector, so Zcash clearly explains a large part of the move. But even after removing it, the remaining privacy sector is still up roughly 56%. That makes the rotation harder to dismiss as simply one token outperforming. Capital is beginning to move toward privacy as a category again. — ● Zcash is trying to bridge privacy and disclosure One reason $ZEC sits at the center of the current move is that Zcash does not treat privacy as all-or-nothing. Its architecture supports both shielded and transparent activity. Users can have: • Shielded transactions for confidentiality • Transparent transactions when disclosure is useful • Viewing keys for selective access • zk-SNARKs providing the cryptographic privacy layer That creates a useful model for financial markets: It is then privacy by default when needed and disclosure when required. This becomes particularly relevant if private assets are expected to interact with regulated exchanges, institutions or financial applications. The goal is not necessarily to choose between privacy and compliance. It is to make disclosure selective rather than universal. — ● But privacy is no longer one market The sector is increasingly fragmenting around different definitions of what private finance should actually look like. @monerorape $XMR Monero takes the strongest digital-cash approach. Privacy is mandatory rather than optional, making fungibility the central product. @Zcash $ZEC Zcash takes a more flexible route, combining zero-knowledge privacy with optional transparency and selective disclosure. @firoorg $FIRO Firo focuses on anonymity-set design and trustless privacy research, pushing deeper into private digital cash infrastructure. @zano_project $ZANO Zano expands privacy beyond transfers into private assets and applications on a privacy-first L1. @salvium_io $SAL Salvium leans toward selective disclosure and private financial activity that can still interact with regulated environments. — ● Other networks are expanding privacy beyond payments The next group is moving away from simply hiding transfers. @SecretNetwork is building private smart-contract infrastructure and confidential computation, including applications around secure AI inference. @OasisProtocol similarly focuses on confidential computing and privacy-preserving applications. @horizenglobal is pushing toward modular privacy and confidential-computing infrastructure. @BeldexCoin combines private payments with identity and cross-chain privacy. @PirateChain focuses heavily on shielded payments, atomic swaps and private marketplaces. @decredproject combines governance-focused digital money with optional privacy tools. @Dashpay continues expanding beyond payments toward shielded transactions and broader financial applications. So the category is splitting into several layers: Private money -> private assets -> private applications -> confidential computation That is a much broader design space than the original privacy-coin narrative. — ● And that creates the real trade-off Pure privacy is only one side of the equation. For private financial infrastructure to become widely useful, protocols also need to solve for: • Liquidity • Compliance • Selective disclosure • Security • Exchange access • Smart-contract utility • Cross-chain interoperability Maximizing privacy is relatively easy to describe but building privacy that can survive inside real financial markets is much harder. And different protocols are making different compromises. Monero optimizes aggressively for private digital cash. Zcash tries to combine privacy with selective transparency. Others are extending confidentiality into applications, assets and computation. — That is why the renewed privacy narrative is more interesting than another rotation into old privacy coins. The underlying question has changed. It is no longer simply: “Can blockchain transactions be hidden?” We already know they can. The more important question is: “What does private financial infrastructure look like when it also needs liquidity, programmability and access to real markets?” • Frozen funds remind users that digital dollars can still carry centralized control. • Transparent ledgers remind them that transaction history can follow money forever. • And increasingly sophisticated privacy networks are trying to solve both problems without isolating themselves from the rest of the financial system. The next generation of private finance will probably not be defined by privacy alone. It will be defined by who can make privacy, fungibility and financial utility coexist.

Midnight Network unveils Nightmode, promising privacy without a bridge Built by @MidnightNtwrk and @Sig_Network, Nightmode will extend Midnight’s privacy tools to chains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Tron. It will go live on mainnet with ledger v9, Midnight’s next major network upgrade, later this year. Users will lock coins in vaults on their home chain and get a matching private balance on Midnight, guarded by shared keys. On apps like Uniswap, trade amounts stay public but the user behind them stays hidden.

Brazil has introduced a new child-protection law that changes how VPNs and other privacy tools are treated in criminal cases. Using a VPN remains legal in Brazil but using a VPN or other tool to hide an IP address while committing certain crimes against children is now an aggravating factor that can lead to a hard sentence. The law also gives police and prosecutors more power to access connection and registration data in urgent cases involving a child’s life and can obtain the information without a prior court order Brazilian officials are also pushing for a Discord ban after the death of a 13-year-old girl during a livestream, the Police asked for Discord to be suspended, but a judge rejected the request. (Apparently this happened first on instagram)

LATEST: ⚡ SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce urged regulators not to treat crypto privacy tools as signs of criminal intent, saying privacy should be the norm for law-abiding users.

Arbitrum Gets a New Way to Keep Crypto Transfers Private NullMask (@NullMaskio) is now live on Arbitrum (@arbitrum) $ARB, bringing its privacy tools to one of Ethereum's largest Layer 2 networks. The protocol lets users deposit $ETH and supported tokens into a shared pool. From there, they can send funds privately, swap assets and withdraw to any address. Users can access NullMask through their existing wallets. The launch extends NullMask's reach across Ethereum, Base (@base) and Arbitrum.

Hal Finney was the first person Satoshi ever sent Bitcoin to Long before Bitcoin, Hal Finney (@halfin) was a cypherpunk, one of the 1990s coders who built privacy tools. He was an early contributor to PGP, the encryption software, and in 2004 launched RPOW, his own digital cash system. When Satoshi Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin software on January 8, 2009, Finney was the first to reply. He soon posted “Running bitcoin” on Twitter, and on January 12, Satoshi sent him 10 $BTC. Some have long suspected that Finney was Satoshi himself. He denied it until his death, and the debate is still open today. Later that year Finney was diagnosed with ALS, a disease that slowly takes away control of the body. He kept writing Bitcoin code using an eye-tracking program. He died on August 28, 2014, at 58. True to his optimism, he chose to be cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in the hope that future medicine might one day bring him back.

Public chains expose everything by default — salary, trades, treasury flows. Most privacy tools are either too slow, too clunky, or too risky for compliant users. @SilentSwap brings fast, compliant privacy to public chains: > Encrypted intent checked against AML and OFAC lists > Routed through a TEE — no link between sender and recipient > Permissioned, non-custodial, one-toggle UX A team with background spanning Nasa, Paypal, Apple, and leading Defi protocols. Catch SilentSwap at EASY Residency S3 Demo Day.