COTI_Official

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.
For COTI updates and to join the conversation, be sure to check out our channels:
Website: https://coti.io/
X: https://twitter.com/COTInetwork
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl-2YzhaPnouvBtotKuM4DA
Telegram: https://t.me/COTInetwork
Discord: https://discord.gg/coti-foundation
GitHub: https://github.com/coti-io
Vibe Coders Telegram: https://t.me/+uuPNfRkKiQ03ZTcx

Privacy stopped being a niche. It became the most important narrative in crypto. And the category forming around it already has a name: Private DeFi.
TL;DR
→ Privacy is now crypto’s consensus narrative, and Private DeFi is the category taking shape around it. → Public chains expose your balances, your trades, and your strategy. That exposure carries a real cost. → Private DeFi is the DeFi you already use, with privacy built in. → It is live today: COTI Privacy Portal & private tokens → Private DEXs & COTI-powered privacy to more chains is coming soon.
Introduction
Privacy stopped being a side quest. It became the moat.
For years, privacy in crypto was treated as a feature for a narrow audience. That framing is over. a16z crypto named privacy a defining theme for 2026, and General Partner Ali Yahya argues that as blockspace becomes a commodity and raw performance converges, privacy is the advantage that builds lasting network effects and keeps users in place.
COTI has been saying this for years. The difference is that while the rest of the market is arriving at the thesis, we are already shipping the product.
Everything Moving On-Chain Shares the Same Problem
Look at where the volume and attention are going, and a pattern appears. The biggest categories in crypto are all constrained by the same thing: total transparency.
Stablecoins are the killer app, with trillions in annual settlement volume. But public balances block payroll, treasury, and B2B payments. No business broadcasts every salary and supplier payment to the world.
Perpetuals are the breakout DeFi primitive. Yet when your position size and entry price are visible to everyone, you get front-run, copied, and hunted toward your liquidation level.
Real-world assets are flooding on-chain. But institutions will not tokenize positions, counterparties, and flows in full public view.
AI agents are about to move real money on-chain. They cannot operate with their entire strategy and every transaction exposed.
Each of these is a privacy problem. COTI is the privacy answer.
It Comes Down to One Switch
Every problem above has the same fix, and it is simpler than it sounds. It comes down to a single switch that everyone understands, from a first-time trader to a global bank: Privacy Off, or Privacy On.
Privacy Off is the default on public chains. Your balances, your trades, and your strategy sit in the open for anyone to read, copy, or use against you.
COTI: Privacy On. Same assets, same apps, same wallets The difference is that balances, transfers, amounts and trades all stay private. The
What “Private DeFi” Actually Means
Private DeFi is simple to define:
DeFi you already use, plus privacy that is built in, equals Private DeFi.
This is not about hiding. It is privacy-preserving infrastructure with selective disclosure: private by default, auditable and verifiable when it must be. That distinction matters. It is privacy for people, builders, agents, and institutions, not just confidentiality for its own sake.
Private DeFi is the umbrella. Private tokens, private trading, private RWAs, and private agent activity are the proof points underneath it.
COTI Already Powers It, Today
This is the part most of the market misses. Private DeFi is not a roadmap promise on COTI. It is in production.
Privacy Portal: Drop a public token in, get a shielded one back, in one-click. Supported assets include COTI, USDT, USDC.e, wETH, wBTC, wADA, and gCOTI. This is where you turn Privacy On. 👉 https://privacy.coti.io/
Private On: Tokens. Built on Private ERC20, our independently audited, fully ERC20-compatible standard where balances stay visible only to you.
Privacy On: NFTs. The same privacy extends to private NFTs: with private ERC-721 support in the COTI MetaMask Snap, you can sync, import, and view private collectibles, identity credentials, and access tokens right inside MetaMask.
Privacy On: DEX & Pers: PriveX, the perpetuals DEX built on COTI has processed over $20 billion in trading volume and connects live AI agents. Encrypted trades are coming next.
Privacy On: Agent Skills and MCP. Live tooling that lets AI agents transact with privacy on COTI.
Privacy On: Demand: Our initiative to bring GC-privacy to leading L1s & L2s chains so any token, app, builder or project can turn privacy on.
Built for Privacy at Scale
Private DeFi only works if privacy is fast and cheap enough to actually use. That is the case for Garbled Circuits, the cryptographic protocol for multi-party computation (MPC) at the core of COTI. It runs up to 3,000x faster and 250x lighter than alternative privacy approaches, on any device, with no specialized hardware. Light and fast is what makes privacy at scale possible.
This Is the Opening
This is the start of a new chapter, for COTI and for crypto. Private DeFi is the category that will define the future of crypto and COTI is already live with real products to power it.
At COTI, we’re early to the category and the technology that will revolutionize the industry. For now, you can get started by turning Privacy On.
Try the Privacy Portal, portal into privacy and try Private DeFi for yourself. 👉 https://privacy.coti.io/
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.
For COTI updates and to join the conversation, be sure to check out our channels:
Website: https://coti.io/
X: https://twitter.com/COTInetwork
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl-2YzhaPnouvBtotKuM4DA
Telegram: https://t.me/COTInetwork
Discord: https://discord.gg/coti-foundation
GitHub: https://github.com/coti-io
Vibe Coders Telegram: https://t.me/+uuPNfRkKiQ03ZTcx