Confidential Transaction Statistics 2026: 40 Verified Figures

Updated October 2026. Every figure on this page was checked against its source in October 2026.

Stablecoin activity settles on public ledgers that anyone can read: stablecoins processed $46 trillion in the 12 months covered by a16z crypto's State of Crypto 2025 report. The value held in privacy protocols is far smaller. Zama and Railgun, two of the largest privacy protocols tracked by DefiLlama, held $127.69 million and $114.19 million in total value locked on October 16, 2026, against $306.97 billion of stablecoins in circulation that day, also according to DefiLlama.

Key statistics

• Stablecoins processed $46 trillion in total transaction volume in the 12 months covered by a16z crypto's State of Crypto 2025 report, up 106% from the year before.
• Total stablecoin market capitalization was $306.97 billion on October 16, 2026, according to DefiLlama.
• 9% of 350 decision-makers ranked on-chain transaction visibility and privacy among their top three barriers to stablecoin adoption in EY-Parthenon's 2025 survey.
• Chainalysis reports more than 1 billion addresses clustered and more than 134,000 entities identified (October 2026).
• Zama held $127.69 million in total value locked on October 16, 2026, according to DefiLlama.
• Railgun held $114.19 million in total value locked on October 16, 2026, up from $107.35 million a year earlier, according to DefiLlama.
• Privacy coins had a combined market capitalization of $31.9 billion on October 16, 2026, according to CoinGecko.
• 4.96 million ZEC, 29.2% of all Zcash, sat in shielded pools on October 16, 2026, according to ZecStats.
• The lowest listed cost to prove a full Ethereum block on Ethproofs was $0.0047 on October 16, 2026.
• Illicit activity was 1.2% of total crypto volume in 2025, down from 1.3% in 2024, according to TRM Labs.

How much stablecoin value moves on public ledgers?

1. Stablecoins processed $46 trillion in one year

Stablecoins processed $46 trillion in total transaction volume over the 12 months covered by a16z crypto's State of Crypto 2025 report, published in October 2025, up 106% from the year before. These transfers settle on public blockchains, where the sender, recipient and amount can be read by anyone who knows an address.

2. $9 trillion in adjusted stablecoin volume, up 87%

After filtering out bots and other artificial activity, stablecoins still processed $9 trillion over the same 12 months, up 87% from a year earlier, according to a16z crypto. a16z describes the adjusted figure as a better measure of organic activity.

3. Stablecoins are 30% of all on-chain crypto volume

Stablecoins made up 30% of all on-chain crypto transaction volume, according to TRM Labs' 2025 Crypto Adoption and Stablecoin Usage Report, published in October 2025. That puts stablecoin transfers among the largest categories of activity on public chains.

4. Over $4 trillion in stablecoin volume from January to July 2025

Stablecoins recorded more than $4 trillion in on-chain transaction volume between January and July 2025, according to TRM Labs.

5. $306.97 billion in stablecoins in circulation

Total stablecoin market capitalization stood at $306.97 billion on October 16, 2026, according to DefiLlama. Any wallet holding part of that supply on a public chain shows its balance to anyone who looks the address up.

6. More than 1% of all US dollars now sit on public blockchains

More than 1% of all US dollars now exist as tokenized stablecoins on public blockchains, according to a16z crypto's State of Crypto 2025 report. For more on what that openness exposes, see our on-chain transparency statistics.

Do businesses want stablecoins, and does visibility hold them back?

7. 54% of non-users plan to adopt stablecoins within 6 to 12 months

54% of financial institutions and corporates not yet using stablecoins expect to start within the next 6 to 12 months, according to EY-Parthenon's 2025 stablecoin survey of 350 decision-makers (305 non-users answered this question; fielded June 10 to 24, 2025).

8. 77% of corporates want stablecoins for cross-border supplier payments

77% of corporates named paying suppliers across borders among the stablecoin use cases they are most interested in over the next five years, in the same EY-Parthenon survey (250 corporates). Supplier payments are also where a public ledger shows who a company buys from and how much it pays.

9. 62% of current users already pay suppliers in stablecoins

Among current stablecoin users, 62% pay suppliers across borders and 53% accept cross-border payments from business partners, according to EY-Parthenon.

10. 9% rank on-chain visibility and privacy as a top-three barrier

9% of 350 decision-makers ranked on-chain transaction visibility and privacy among their top three barriers to adopting stablecoins, according to EY-Parthenon's 2025 survey. Regulatory uncertainty ranked first, at 73% (figure 40).

11. 48% say speed is the top benefit of stablecoins

48% of payments and finance professionals surveyed by Fireblocks named speed as the top benefit of stablecoins, with lower costs cited last (State of Stablecoins 2025, 295 respondents surveyed in March 2025).

12. B2B stablecoin payments passed $6 billion a month

B2B stablecoin payment volume among the companies in Artemis' Stablecoin Payments from the Ground Up study grew from under $100 million a month at the start of 2023 to over $6.0 billion a month by mid-2025 (October 2025 edition).

13. B2B is the largest stablecoin payment category at $76 billion a year

B2B payments annualized at $76 billion as of August 2025, the largest category in Artemis' sample, ahead of P2P at a $19 billion run rate. These are the flows that show vendor lists, payment terms and counterparties when they run from a public wallet.

What does a public wallet address reveal?

14. Over 150 million addresses hold stablecoins

Over 150 million blockchain addresses hold a nonzero stablecoin balance, according to Artemis (October 2025). On a public chain, each balance can be read by anyone with the address, including the customers, suppliers and partners it has paid or been paid by.

15. About 10 million addresses transact in stablecoins every day

Approximately 10 million blockchain addresses make a stablecoin transaction every day, according to Artemis.

16. Over 1 billion addresses have been grouped into entities

Chainalysis reports more than 1 billion addresses clustered and more than 134,000 unique entities identified across 29 chains, as shown on its blockchain intelligence page in October 2026. Clustering links separate addresses to one owner, which is why a new address for each payment is a weak form of privacy.

17. 17.9% of active Ethereum accounts clustered from public data (historical baseline)

As a historical baseline, a 2020 study by Friedhelm Victor of TU Berlin clustered 17.9% of all active Ethereum externally owned accounts into 343,467 multi-address entities, using only public patterns such as exchange deposit-address reuse, on data through September 2019.

How much value sits in DeFi privacy protocols?

18. Zama holds $127.69 million in TVL

Zama held $127.69 million in total value locked on October 16, 2026, up from $27.75 million when DefiLlama began tracking it on May 4, 2026.

19. Railgun holds $114.19 million in TVL

Railgun held $114.19 million in total value locked on October 16, 2026, compared with $107.35 million a year earlier on October 16, 2025, according to DefiLlama.

20. Railgun flows passed $200 million a month in 2025

Railgun's transaction flows surpassed $200 million a month in 2025, according to a16z crypto's State of Crypto 2025 report, which listed it among the signs that privacy is returning to the foreground.

21. Railgun earned $4.19 million in fees in 12 months

Railgun generated $4.19 million in fees in the 12 months to October 16, 2026, and $13.89 million since launch, according to DefiLlama.

22. Privacy Cash holds $1.92 million in TVL

Privacy Cash held $1.92 million in total value locked on October 16, 2026, and generated $1.12 million in fees over the previous 12 months, according to DefiLlama.

23. Privacy Boost holds $1.60 million in TVL

Privacy Boost held $1.60 million in total value locked on October 16, 2026, according to DefiLlama.

24. Houdini Swap has routed $2.586 billion in cumulative volume

Houdini Swap has routed $2.586 billion in cumulative aggregator volume, according to DefiLlama data through September 23, 2026, the latest day reported. The value held in the protocols above is a small fraction of the $306.97 billion stablecoin supply (figure 5).

Privacy tokens: market cap and shielded supply

25. Privacy coins are worth $31.9 billion combined

The privacy coins category on CoinGecko had a combined market capitalization of $31.9 billion across 52 tracked coins on October 16, 2026. Businesses that need confidentiality for stablecoin payments have other options, which we compare in privacy coin alternatives for regulated treasuries.

26. Zcash leads privacy coins at $20.82 billion

Zcash had a market capitalization of $20.82 billion on October 16, 2026, compared with $10.53 billion for Monero, according to CoinGecko.

27. Monero held 58% of privacy-coin market cap in December 2025

In December 2025, OAK Research put Monero at 58% of total privacy-coin market capitalization, Zcash at 21% and Dash at 10%. Read with figure 26, Zcash has since overtaken Monero.

28. 29.2% of all ZEC sits in shielded pools

4.96 million ZEC, 29.2% of all Zcash, sat in shielded pools on October 16, 2026, according to ZecStats.

29. Zcash shielded supply was nearly 4 million ZEC in 2025

Zcash's shielded pool supply grew to nearly 4 million ZEC in 2025, according to a16z crypto's State of Crypto 2025 report.

Zero-knowledge proofs: adoption and cost

30. Zero-knowledge proof market estimated at $1,277.7 million in 2024

Grand View Research estimates the global zero-knowledge proof market at $1,277.7 million in 2024 (report published November 2025, updated July 2026). Zero-knowledge proofs let a system confirm a transaction is valid without revealing its details; our ZK foundations explainer covers how they work.

31. A projected $7,585.6 million zero-knowledge proof market by 2033

Grand View Research projects the market to reach $7,585.6 million by 2033, a compound annual growth rate of 22.1% from 2025 to 2033. Treat it as a forecast.

32. ZK proving is projected to grow from $97 million to $1.34 billion by 2030

Chorus One projects the market for generating zero-knowledge proofs to grow from about $97 million in 2025 to $1.34 billion in 2030 (The Economics of ZK-Proving, March 2025).

33. About 580 million ZK-rollup transactions needed proofs in 2024

ZK rollups generated about 580 million transactions that required zero-knowledge proofs in 2024, according to Chorus One.

34. Proving a zkSync transaction cost about $0.0045

Generating the proof for a zkSync transaction cost about $0.0045 in 2024 to 2025, according to Chorus One.

35. 99.7% of Ethereum blocks proven in under 12 seconds on 16 GPUs

Succinct's SP1 Hypercube proved 99.7% of Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 12 seconds, and 95.4% in under 10 seconds, on 16 NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs (November 2025).

36. Proving a full Ethereum block costs $0.0047

The lowest listed cost to prove a full Ethereum block on Ethproofs was $0.0047 per proof, for ZisK running on four NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs, on October 16, 2026. Proof generation now costs a fraction of a cent per block.

Compliance: how confidentiality and regulation fit together

37. Illicit activity was 1.2% of crypto volume in 2025

Illicit activity fell to 1.2% of total crypto volume in 2025, from 1.3% in 2024, according to TRM Labs' 2026 Crypto Crime Report, even as illicit volume reached a record $158 billion.

38. Stablecoins carried 84% of illicit crypto volume in 2025

Stablecoins accounted for 84% of all illicit crypto transaction volume in 2025, while illicit activity stayed below 1% of all on-chain volume, according to Chainalysis' 2026 Crypto Crime Report. This is why screening funds before they enter a private balance matters; see how KYT screening on deposit addresses works.

39. 83% of jurisdictions have passed Travel Rule laws

83% of jurisdictions responding to FATF's 2026 survey had passed legislation implementing the Travel Rule, up from 73% in 2025 (Seventh Targeted Update on Virtual Assets and VASPs, July 2026). Privacy that can still disclose to an auditor fits this direction; we compare the two main models in association sets vs selective disclosure.

40. 73% name regulatory uncertainty as a top barrier

73% of 350 decision-makers named regulatory uncertainty as a top-three barrier to adopting stablecoins, nearly twice the share of the next-highest barrier, according to EY-Parthenon's 2025 stablecoin survey. The survey was fielded before the GENIUS Act became law on July 18, 2025.

What this means for businesses moving stablecoins

The figures point the same way. Stablecoin volume is large and settles in public (figures 1 to 6), businesses are moving supplier payments and payouts on-chain (figures 7 to 13), and the value held in privacy protocols is small next to the $306.97 billion stablecoin supply (figures 5 and 18 to 24). For a business, the exposure is to counterparties: a customer, supplier or partner who knows one of your addresses can read its balance, its payment history and who else it pays.

The Hinkal API and SDK let PSPs, wallets and platforms add private balances to the product they already run. Hinkal is a smart contract on the public chains businesses already use: a private balance is controlled by the user's existing wallet keys, and sender, recipient and amount stay private on-chain. The API runs inside a secure enclave, where it generates the zero-knowledge proofs and builds each transaction, while the caller keeps its own wallet and authorizes requests with its signature. Teams that want an app can use Hinkal Pay to send, swap and receive privately from the wallet they already use, on Ethereum, Solana, TRON and major EVM networks. Compliance runs in the same flow: every deposit is screened against Chainalysis at entry and re-screened continuously, funds that fail screening never enter the private balance, every deposit stays linked to the address that made it, and viewing keys and downloadable transaction history give auditors selective disclosure when required. Confidential, not anonymous.

Methodology

Figures were chosen for businesses that move money in stablecoins and need to know what public chains reveal and how privacy and compliance tools are developing. Every figure was checked against its source on October 16, 2026.

Live data (stablecoin supply, total value locked, fees, volume, market cap, shielded supply and proving cost) was read from DefiLlama, CoinGecko, ZecStats and Ethproofs on October 16, 2026 and will change after that date. Survey figures give the sample size and fielding period. Estimates and projections are labeled and attributed to the firm that made them, and data older than 2024 appears only as a labeled historical baseline. Each figure is attributed to its publisher in the line where it appears.

Frequently asked questions

How much stablecoin activity happens on public blockchains?

Stablecoins processed $46 trillion in total transaction volume in the 12 months covered by a16z crypto's State of Crypto 2025 report, or $9 trillion on an adjusted basis that filters out bots. These transfers settle on public chains, where addresses and amounts are visible.

How big is the privacy coin market?

CoinGecko valued its privacy coins category at $31.9 billion on October 16, 2026, led by Zcash at $20.82 billion and Monero at $10.53 billion.

How much value is held in DeFi privacy protocols?

On October 16, 2026, DefiLlama showed $127.69 million in Zama and $114.19 million in Railgun, with smaller protocols such as Privacy Cash at $1.92 million and Privacy Boost at $1.60 million.

Do businesses see on-chain visibility as a barrier to stablecoins?

Some do. 9% of 350 decision-makers in EY-Parthenon's 2025 stablecoin survey ranked on-chain transaction visibility and privacy among their top three barriers, while 73% named regulatory uncertainty.

How much does it cost to generate a zero-knowledge proof?

Ethproofs listed $0.0047 to prove a full Ethereum block on October 16, 2026, and Chorus One estimated about $0.0045 to prove a single zkSync transaction in 2024 to 2025.

Can confidential transactions be compliant?

Yes, when screening and disclosure are built in. Illicit activity was 1.2% of crypto volume in 2025 according to TRM Labs, and 83% of jurisdictions in FATF's 2026 survey have passed Travel Rule laws. Confidential systems built for businesses pair privacy with deposit screening and selective disclosure to auditors.

Related reading

• Hinkal vs Inco: Confidential Computing Compared
• Episode 04: Stealth Addresses
• Episode 02: ZK Foundations

Learn more about the Hinkal API and SDK.