Shielded report, Dfns brings encrypted transactions to 400+ enterprise clients, new SDK and more

Over the past month, the Zama Protocol shipped a major upgrade, institutional partners moved into production, and the confidential onchain finance stack expanded across new chains, exchanges, and verticals.

Here is where things stand.

Q1-2026 on the record

The first edition of Shielded (Q1 2026) is now live.

The report covers what the Zama Protocol shipped in its first public quarter, what the data reveals, and what the first chapter of confidential onchain finance looks like in practice.

→ Download the report: zama.org/shielded

What shipped

The latest protocol update advanced both developer tooling and end-user infrastructure.

For developers, the Zama SDK (beta) introduces an ERC-20-style interface for confidential tokens, abstracting FHE complexity behind TypeScript, Wagmi, Viem, and React bindings. Delegated decryption is also now live: a rules-based primitive that allows a designated party (custodian, compliance provider, or regulator) to decrypt specific encrypted values under predefined conditions. For institutions operating on public chains, this is the access control layer that has been missing.

→ Getting started with Zama SDK

For users, the Portfolio App introduced a confidential cUSDT on-ramp. $ZAMA bridging now supports Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Hyperliquid, and Solana. More than 50% of the $ZAMA circulating supply is staked across 18 active operators, securing the network. $ZAMA is also now listed on Bitpanda, Upbit, and Bithumb, expanding access across Europe and Asia.

→ Read the full blog post

Institutional infrastructure

Dfns has integrated ERC-7984 natively into its wallet and transaction infrastructure, bringing encrypted onchain transactions to 400+ enterprise clients across banking, fintech, custody, RWA, and payments.

The use cases are live now:

→ Settlement with encrypted transfer amounts→ B2B payments without exposing balances→ Tokenized RWA distribution that preserves investor confidentiality→ Compliance through programmable access control and selective disclosure

This is not a pilot. Production-ready and available now.

→ Read the full announcement

The ecosystem

Zama Builder Villa at EthCC[9].

The Zama Builder Villa ran for four days in Cannes during EthCC[9], bringing together teams building confidential onchain finance.

T-REX Network — $32B tokenized, with Apex Group committed to bringing $100B onto the T-REX Ledger by 2027 — presented why confidentiality is non-negotiable for tokenized funds and securities. OpenZeppelin presented its Confidential Contracts library: audited, production-ready Solidity tooling that extends the developer workflows teams already trust. Raycash explored confidential stablecoin payments where balances and counterparties stay off the public feed while remaining compatible with regulated finance. Orion Finance showcased onchain portfolio management: confidential for managers, transparent for investors.

All presentations and interviews are available.

→ Watch the full playlist

Developer Program Mainnet Season 2.

Developer Program Mainnet Season 2 wrapped with three tracks:

→ Confidential dApps track — 7,000 cUSDT→ AI agent skills track, teaching LLMs to write FHEVM code — 3,000 cUSDT→ OpenBuild APAC Special Bounty — 5,000 cUSDT

→ See Season 2 details

PL Genesis Hackathon.

The PL Genesis: Frontiers of Collaboration Hackathon drew 880 projects. 51 were built on the Zama Protocol.

→ Check the winning projects

Zama Developer Stories.

Patricia has been following Zama since the original TFHE-rs library, five years ago as a student. She tracked the FHE stack from a GitHub repository to a production-ready confidentiality layer for public blockchains — then built a confidential payroll project with her co-founder Joaquin and won the Zama Developer Program.

Most teams entering the program encounter FHE for the first time. Patricia is not most teams.

→ Read the full story

What comes next

The confidential finance stack is no longer theoretical. Infrastructure is live, institutional integrations are in production, and the application layer is expanding.

As Rand Hindi put it on the 21Shares podcast: every encryption technology that reached broad adoption converged at 95% market share — HTTPS, encrypted messaging, and the rest. Onchain finance will follow. The question is not whether financial transactions move onchain. It is how much of that volume will be confidential.

→ Contact the team: zama.org/contact