ZEC bucked the trend and rose; what other projects in the privacy sector are worth watching?

Original article | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | Asher ( @Asher_0210 )

ZEC prices have once again performed exceptionally well amidst the market crash.

This morning, BTC briefly fell to $86,000, dragging down the overall crypto market. CoinGecko data shows that the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies has dropped to $3.042 trillion, a 5.5% decrease in the last 24 hours.

Amid a general market downturn, ZEC bucked the trend and surged, briefly breaking through $700 this morning. Although the price has since retreated somewhat, the ZEC/BTC price action clearly shows that ZEC continues to outperform BTC, exhibiting a completely different trend from other mainstream altcoins. ( For more on the reasons behind ZEC's surge, see: The Hidden Narrative Behind ZEC's Surge: The Safe Haven Migration of "Chen Zhihe and Qian Zhimin" ).

ZEC/BTC candlestick chart

ZEC's counter-trend rise may ignite a new wave of trend expectations for the entire privacy sector once the market recovers. This raises the question: besides ZEC, which is generating much discussion in the community, what other privacy-related projects are worth paying attention to?

Coins already issued

For projects that have already issued tokens in the privacy sector, this section focuses on those tokens that have recently generated a lot of discussion, have active official teams, and a strong narrative.

Old Coin Zone

Monero (XMR): Launched in 2014, its sole focus is making privacy a mandatory default option for all users. It achieves this through a powerful combination of stealth addresses, ring signatures, and a technology called RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions), which can hide transaction amounts.

Dash (DASH): Launched in 2014 under the name XCoin, it focuses on speed and ease of use, with privacy as an optional feature. Users can choose to mix their tokens with those of other users to obscure their transaction history.

Horizen (ZEN) is a blockchain platform focused on providing developers with tools to build private applications and sidechains. Its mainchain uses zk-SNARKs technology similar to Zcash, offering optional privacy.

Decred (DCR) is a blockchain that uses a hybrid PoW/PoS consensus mechanism and emphasizes governance and flexibility. Back in 2019, the project introduced an optional privacy feature based on an upgraded CoinJoin protocol, allowing DCR holders to obfuscate their transaction records when participating in staking, thereby anonymizing the source of their funds.

The four established privacy coins mentioned above, while having limited technological advancements, have a light asset structure and a relatively small retail investor base. Once the sector gains momentum, their short-term price performance often becomes very strong. If you believe that ZEC will drive a broad-based rise in the privacy sector after the overall market recovers, these established coins are worth considering.

low market capitalization area

Succinct (PROVE): A decentralized zero-knowledge proof generation protocol that provides efficient and low-cost proof services through a global prover and bidding mechanism, promoting the scalability and privacy protection of blockchain and decentralized applications. PROVE is a relatively new coin, listed on Binance Alpha in early August, with an all-time high of $1.71. It is currently priced at $0.48, with a market capitalization of $94 million.

Anoma (XAN): An intent-centralized infrastructure project that builds a universal intent system, supporting cross-chain coordination and privacy protection. XAN is a relatively new coin, listed on Binance Alpha at the end of September, with an all-time high of $0.27. It is currently trading at $0.036, with a market capitalization of $91 million.

PIVX (PIVX): An "old" project in the privacy sector, it has recently rebounded significantly with the rise in ZEC prices and is worth watching. PIVX has risen by more than 50% in the past month, with a current price of $0.25 and a market capitalization of $25 million.

ZERA (formerly M0N3Y): A fully community-driven meme token. As the team's vision for privacy, zero-knowledge (ZK), and digital cash became clearer, they wanted to transform the project from a purely speculative community into a long-term, privacy-focused protocol. The old token system couldn't support the new project's needs. The token migration was completed on October 2nd, and the price has increased by over 75% in the past 14 days, currently trading at $0.027 with a market capitalization of $27 million.

The cryptocurrencies listed above in the privacy sector have relatively low market capitalizations and are mostly newly listed, with potential for explosive price surges. On one hand, it's necessary to monitor data such as net inflows of spot funds, changes in contract open interest, and funding rates to determine if there are any market manipulators entering the market. On the other hand, it's crucial to pay attention to whether the project's official team is conducting any significant activities, such as token buybacks, burns, or staking rewards.

Unissued coins

For privacy-focused projects that haven't yet issued tokens, it's worthwhile to gain early access through interaction and active participation in the project's community to potentially win token airdrops.

Zama

Project Overview: Zama is dedicated to providing privacy protection solutions for decentralized applications (DApps). Through innovative zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology, Zama ensures the privacy of user data and enhances the security and trustworthiness of the blockchain ecosystem. Furthermore, Zama is developing customized solutions for the artificial intelligence, healthcare, financial services, and government security industries ( for more information, see: The Next Blockchain Giant: Why ZAMA Raised $130 Million ).

Attraction: Zama has completed two rounds of financing, totaling $130 million . In March 2024, Zama announced the completion of a $73 million Series A financing, co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs. In June 2025, Zama announced the completion of a $57 million Series B financing, led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital.

Interactive Tutorial: Zama First, you need to complete the guild quest (link: https://guild.xyz/zama ).

Basic task: Send your wallet to the Zama Guild. You can complete this by joining three of the four official communities and you can also join the official Discord channel to obtain an identity role.

New to Zama?   Task: It consists of five sub-tasks, which can be easily completed by following the task prompts.

Creator Program Tasks: This includes two sub-tasks. The first sub-task has funding requirements, and the second sub-task is the Creator Program itself.

Developer Program Tasks: These tasks have high requirements; proceed according to your own circumstances.

Seismic

Project Overview: Seismic is an L1 project in the privacy module that implements protocol-level encryption through the Intel TDX Trusted Execution Environment, providing an EVM-compatible privacy solution.

Attractive points: On November 12, Seismic announced the completion of a $10 million funding round, led by a16z crypto . It also completed a $7 million funding round in March of this year, also led by a1z crypto. To date, it has completed a total of $17 million in funding .

Interactive tutorial: The developer testnet is now online, and the mainnet is expected to launch by the end of 2025.

STEP 1. Claim test tokens (link: https://faucet-2.seismicdev.net/ ), you can claim 0.5 ETH per hour.

STEP 2. Deploy the contract (link: https://www.onchaindaily.io/ ).

Additionally, you can access the "Scroll" channel on the official Discord (link: https://discord.com/invite/seismic ) to create a character. Currently, levels range from Magnitude 1.0 to Magnitude 9.0, all manually assigned by community administrators. Magnitude 1.0 is assigned based on a user's activity level and chat quality within the group; Magnitude 2.0 through 9.0 are assigned every Friday, based on the user's contribution to the project and community.

Inco

Inco is an EVM-compatible privacy-focused L1 project that provides native privacy capabilities for smart contracts through Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Its core, fhEVM, combines FHE with the EVM, enabling developers to perform computations directly on encrypted data, thus enabling entirely new use cases such as privacy games, DID (Discretionary Identifier), anonymous voting, and dark pool transactions.

Attractive points: On April 25, Inco announced the completion of a $5 million funding round led by a16z crypto CSX , and a $4.5 million funding round led by 1kx in February last year, bringing its total funding to nearly $10 million .

Interaction Tutorial: Currently, Inco's interactive operations mainly involve interacting with its supported ecosystem projects.

STEP 1. Go to the website to claim test tokens (link: https://www.alchemy.com/faucets/base-sepolia ), select the "Base Sepolia" test network, complete the human verification, and enter your address to claim the test tokens ETH (you need to have 0.001 ETH in your wallet on the Base mainnet to claim).

STEP 2. After entering the Hangman project interactive website (link: https://hangman.inco.org/ ), click "Connect Wallet to Play" to connect your wallet and start the word guessing game (select letters to form the correct word; each wallet selection requires 2 confirmations).

STEP 3. After entering the Comfy project interaction website (link: https://comfy.inco.org/ ), click "Connect Wallet" and then select "Mint now" to access Mint USDC.

STEP 4. Select “Shield” to exchange a portion of USDC for cUSDC, then click “Unshield” to exchange a portion of cUSDC for USDC.

STEP 5. Send cUSD to other addresses (or personal interaction addresses).