Confidentiality in blockchain has moved from niche concern to existential question. Ethereum may soon host trillions in value, but as panelists in the latest DeCC X Space warned, transparency could turn from a virtue into a vulnerability. Hosted by Angie from Fhenix, the discussion brought together eight of the leading minds in confidential computing to explore what comes next for Web3 and why privacy is now a prerequisite for adoption.

Meet the Panel

Guy Zyskind, Founder & CEO of Fhenix, has spent more than a decade building privacy-first infrastructure. After founding Enigma and Secret Network, he is now focused on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), which allows computation over encrypted data.

Auryn Macmillan, Co-founder of Enclave, is the leading voice behind Encrypted Execution Environments (EEEs), a system designed to go beyond Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) by relying on crypto-economic guarantees rather than trusting hardware vendors.

AnewbiZ, COO of Secret Network Foundation, coordinates operations and ecosystem development for one of the earliest privacy-preserving smart contract networks.

Bruce Ahn, Head of Adoption at Partisia Blockchain, is a champion for secure multi-party computation (MPC) and ensuring that privacy tools make the leap from research to real-world production.

Iosif Peterfi, Founder & CEO of Ethernity CLOUD, is building a decentralized cloud platform where data stays encrypted during processing and access is censorship-resistant.

Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of COTI, leads the company’s mission to deliver compliant privacy solutions for payments, tokenization, and financial infrastructure.

Joshua Maddox, COTI’s Chief Ecosystem & Partnerships Officer, focuses on onboarding real-world assets (RWAs) and nurturing the developer ecosystem to drive adoption of privacy-enabled applications.

Gavin Thomas, Co-founder of TEN Protocol and a former builder of enterprise blockchain Corda, is focused on encrypted rollups for Ethereum, combining scalability with privacy.

Guiding the conversation was Anzhelika (Angie) Hrokholska from Fhenix, who kept the discussion focused on a central question: when does confidentiality move from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” for Web3?

The Case for Privacy by Default

Guy Zyskind set the tone: “Crypto is coming of age. We are moving from speculation to mass adoption. Privacy isn’t an optional feature anymore, it’s one of the top three requirements for infrastructure that will power global payments and institutional finance.”

His focus is on encrypted stablecoins and confidential DeFi. He argued that stablecoins with encrypted balances will unlock liquidity by allowing institutions and individuals to transact without broadcasting their positions to competitors or the public.

Auryn Macmillan followed by highlighting why Encrypted Execution Environments are crucial. “EEEs go beyond TEEs, they replace hardware trust with crypto-economic guarantees,” he said. This is not simply a security upgrade, but a philosophical one: trust is shifting from vendors to open, verifiable, incentive-aligned networks.

AnewbiZ tied privacy directly to security, warning that open transaction data creates real-world risk. “If real-time payments are public, anyone can trace where you were, what you bought, and how much you hold in your wallet. That’s not just inconvenient, it’s dangerous,” he said. Secret Network’s experience has shown that privacy-preserving smart contracts can run at scale, and he believes confidentiality must be embedded in every user experience, not offered as a toggle.

Transparency ≠ Verifiability

Bruce Ahn introduced an important nuance. “Transparency does not equal verifiability. Users need control of what stays private.” For him, adoption risk lies in systems that are either too opaque for regulators or too revealing for users. MPC, he argued, is one of the few tools that can balance these needs proving correctness of computation without disclosing inputs.

Iosif Peterfi picked up the thread, connecting it to the challenge of bringing RWAs on-chain. “Without privacy rails, RWAs won’t move on-chain,” he warned. Ownership structures, valuations, and counterparty exposure must be shielded, not plastered on public ledgers. His work at Ethernity Cloud is aimed at making confidential computation as accessible as public cloud infrastructure, but without the data leaks or single points of trust.

Privacy as a One-Way Ticket

Shahaf Bar-Geffen’s perspective was uncompromising. “Privacy is a one-way ticket. Once users have it, they won’t go back,” he said. He pointed to the example of WhatsApp’s introduction of end-to-end encryption: once it arrived, users expected it everywhere. For COTI, this means privacy must be the default, not an add-on, particularly for payments and tokenized assets.

Joshua Maddox reinforced this from the adoption side: “RWAs and stablecoins are where privacy will be forced. If trillions of dollars of assets are to flow on-chain, users must be able to shield transactions even when 99% of their activity is compliant and benign.” His focus is on ensuring that developers have the tools and documentation to build privacy-preserving applications that meet these demands.

Scaling, Regulation, and UX

Gavin Thomaas brought an engineer’s pragmatism to the debate. Encrypted rollups, he said, are the way to scale private transactions on Ethereum. But UX cannot be sacrificed. “If it feels slow or the UX is clunky, it won’t get used,” he warned. TEN Protocol is focused on making confidentiality as seamless as transparency so that adoption doesn’t stall.

Angie, moderating, pressed the panel on regulatory implications. Several speakers agreed that privacy must coexist with selective disclosure for compliance. “Provide privacy by default,” said Gavin, “and you actually solve part of the regulatory problem by making data protection the baseline rather than the exception.”

Adoption Risks and the Road Ahead

What emerged from the discussion is a picture of a Web3 that must evolve to survive. Privacy is no longer ideological; it is practical. The risks panelists identified were clear: loss of user trust if privacy is partial, failure to attract RWAs if confidentiality isn’t guaranteed, and the danger of poor UX derailing good technology.

The prescription was equally clear:

• Build privacy in from the start.

• Offer verifiable proofs without exposing sensitive data.

• Make compliance pathways clear and auditable.

• Put user experience first.

As Angie closed the session, the consensus was unmistakable: confidentiality is the missing layer for mass adoption of Web3. From FHE and MPC to EEEs and encrypted rollups, the technology is here. What remains is execution, education, and productisation.

“Privacy is a one-way ticket,” Shahaf repeated. And if the panelists are right, it is also the ticket that will carry Ethereum, and Web3, into its institutional and mainstream future.