TL;DR
→ Privacy has started to go live across networks. What actually differs is the cryptography underneath and the trade-offs are not equal.
→ Most confidential networks let an operator, institution, or permissioned node read your data in plaintext. Few keep it encrypted the whole way.
→ COTI uses Garbled Circuits: contracts run on encrypted data nobody can see, on any device, in standard Solidity.
→ COTI GC privacy is live, not theoretical.
→ The COTI token powers private transactions across multiple chains, protocols and any programmable privacy solution.
Privacy Is the Standard. The Approach Is the Difference.
Many serious blockchains are now introducing or talking about privacy. That is the easy part. The hard part is that “private” means something different on every network, and the difference is not cosmetic.
It is the cryptography underneath, and it decides the one thing that matters more than any feature list: who can actually read your data.
Two networks can both promise privacy and deliver something completely different. One keeps your data encrypted the entire way through. The other lets an operator read every transaction in plaintext and simply promises not to look. Both print “private” on the box.
This matters because the demand is real. Institutions will not move trillions in real-world assets onto a fully transparent ledger. Traders do not want their strategies exposed to bots and front-runners.
So the question is not whether a network has privacy. It is how it delivers privacy, what you give up to get it, and whether you can ship on it in production today. Every one of those answers traces back to one decision: the cryptographic approach the network chose.
The Landscape in One View
Six confidential networks, mapped across the dimensions that actually matter to a builder: who sees your data, who can verify execution, who runs the network, who controls disclosure, and what stays private.
Four Ways to Make Web3 Private
Group these networks by the cryptography they rely on, and the trade-offs snap into focus. Each approach is a legitimate answer to a real problem. They simply answer different questions, and they ask for different things in return.
1. Privacy by permission
Canton keeps data private by controlling who is allowed to view it. A transaction is split into per-participant views, so each party receives only the parts that name it. That is real protection against the sequencer and mediator roles.
The trade-off lives in the nodes. The participant nodes hosting those parties read the relevant data in plaintext, and no outside party can reconstruct the full ledger to verify it independently. Correctness rests on those nodes behaving. It is a strong fit for a known consortium, and a weaker one the moment you do not control the nodes.
2. Privacy by operator
Tempo and zkSync Prividium give you privacy from the public, not from the operator. In both, an operator processes every transaction in plaintext and decides who sees what.
The difference between them is verifiability. Prividium settles a validity proof to Ethereum so the operator cannot forge state, a genuine improvement, and Tempo checks each zone against its mainnet. This model works well in high-trust institutional settings, a bank running its own infrastructure, for example. It offers far less to a smaller team that cannot stand up its own nodes.
3. Privacy by zero-knowledge proof
Starknet’s STRK20 and Aztec move privacy onto the user’s device. Proofs are generated client-side, so no operator ever sees plaintext, and integrity is anchored by proofs that settle to Ethereum. These are powerful designs.
Where they part ways is disclosure. STRK20 registers an on-chain viewing key that a designated auditor can use to trace a full history, while Aztec keeps disclosure with the user. The shared trade-off is practical, not theoretical: client-side zero-knowledge (ZK) proving is computationally heavy, the developer experience often means learning a new language instead of standard Solidity, and these networks are still early on the path to production scale.
4. Privacy by Garbled Circuits
COTI takes a different cryptographic route entirely: Garbled Circuits, a protocol for secure multi-party computation (MPC). Smart contracts compute directly on encrypted inputs, so the data is never exposed. Not to an operator, not to the network, not to anyone who should not see it.
Here is what happens under the hood. A garbled circuit takes a specific function, a transfer, a comparison, an auction settlement, and encrypts the function itself, typically with NIST-standard AES, the same battle-tested cryptography that has secured data for decades.
Encrypted inputs go in, encrypted outputs come out, and the result is provably correct without a single value being revealed. Most of the heavy computation happens once, at the setup, or garbling, stage, which is why the actual on-chain operation runs so fast.
COTI Garbled Circuits: Privacy You can Build On
Built with Soda Labs, COTI is the first to bring a full, production Garbled Circuits implementation to a live blockchain. That single choice changes what privacy can actually do in practice, in three ways.
It runs anywhere. Because the expensive work happens at setup and there is no heavy client-side proving step, confidential computation runs between 1,800 and 3,000x faster and up to 250x lighter than FHE-based approaches.
Light enough for any device, including mobile, with no specialized hardware. In production, the COTI Network already sustains 80+ confidential transactions per second.
It is built for many parties at once. MPC lets multiple participants compute over private inputs together, each keeping their own data confidential. That unlocks shared confidential logic between counterparties, not just one-to-one shielding.
It speaks Solidity. COTI’s gcEVM is fully EVM-compatible and the first production-ready Garbled Circuits EVM. Developers write confidential contracts in Solidity with familiar tools like Hardhat, adding privacy parameters to choose what stays private and what goes public inside a single contract.
The Part a Benchmark Cannot Show: It Is Live
Cryptography on a whiteboard is one thing. Cryptography carrying real economic weight is another. COTI’s GC mainnet launched in March 2025 and has processed 125 million+ on-chain transactions.
The privacy is already doing real work:
Bancor’s Arb Fast Lane, using Garbled Circuits to encrypt execution thresholds and protect arbitrage strategies from front-running.
VaccineLedger, with 10 million+ privacy-preserving supply-chain transactions in Bangladesh, for under $5 in total cost.
United Network, the first hardware wallet to integrate COTI’s privacy, enabling confidential transactions with a card tap.
The approach has external validation, too. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly pointed to Garbled Circuits as the path to pure-cryptographic security guarantees for multi-party computation. COTI is the project that answered that call on Ethereum’s testnet.
Privacy On: Any Use Case or Chain
Privacy should be purpose-built, not one-size-fits-all. A high-frequency DEX protecting traders from front-running needs raw speed. A regulated fund tokenizing billions in real-world assets needs KYC-gating, auditability, and compliance workflows. No single approach serves both perfectly.
COTI Garbled Circuits isn’t limited to its own network. The COTI privacy stack is fully composable and able to run on leading L1s and L2 chains. COTI is bringing GC to Ethereum and other top chains, with Privacy-on-Demand.
COTI can meet the privacy demand on the chains and wallets and for the enterprises and users no matter where they are. All powered by one token, COTI.
The Bigger Picture
The rise of privacy across Web3 is good for everyone, and every network here has a legitimate place. But “private” is not a single thing, and the differences are the whole story. They decide who can read your data, what you trade away to keep it confidential, and whether the technology is something you can build on now or something you are still waiting on.
COTI’s answer is to keep computation encrypted end to end, hand builders standard Solidity and any device, and prove it in production rather than in a pitch. The thesis that privacy would become critical infrastructure is no longer in question. The only question left is who delivers it, at scale, today.
That is what it means to be the programmable privacy layer for Web3. Privacy built in, not bolted on.
Stay COTI.
About COTI:
COTI is the programmable privacy layer for Web3. Built for enterprises, builders, and agents. Powered by high-performance Garbled Circuits and enterprise-grade COTI Nightfall (ZK), COTI enables encrypted computation on any public blockchain. Fast, low-cost, and compliant privacy across DeFi, AI, and beyond.
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