Institutions have stayed offchain for three reasons: trades are visible to everyone, compliance is unclear, and the rails are slow.

In July, the Zama Protocol reached major milestones across all three fronts. Here’s a quick recap of what happened across the Zama ecosystem in month.

Zama Confidential RFQ: trade onchain without revealing size, asset or direction

Large trades still happen offchain, in dark pools, OTC desks, and encrypted chats, because public blockchains expose trading strategies and expose capital to MEV. Crypto OTC alone settles an estimated $50-60B per day.

The Zama Confidential RFQ  is now live in private beta on Ethereum: the first fully onchain, composable, confidential RFQ-based swap protocol. Trade size and direction stay encrypted throughout. 100% of swap fees go toward buying back and burning $ZAMA.

How it works‍

• Trader submits an encrypted swap intent (amount, slippage, and direction hidden)
• Market makers decrypt size only and quote both sides blind, onchain
• The RFQ contract selects the best quote via sealed-bid auction
• The winning market maker settles, and the trader receives the funds

Beta pairs: cUSDT/cUSDC, cZAMA/cUSDC, csteakUSDC/cUSDC. Public launch follows in September with more pairs.

→ Request beta access

→ Contact the team

Reaching 1,000 TPS

With the release of TFHE-rs v1.7, FHE is no longer the bottleneck for confidential transfers:

• 1,040 confidential ERC-7984 transfers/sec on a single 8x H100 node
• 2.6x throughput gain over v1.6, a year ahead of roadmap
• <$0.00005 cost per confidential transfer

For reference, Ethereum mainnet settles ~15–20 tx/sec.

→ Read the full announcement

→ Track the Zama Protocol metrics on Dune

Also this month

• Zama x Elliptic: Elliptic now provides wallet risk screening for the Zama app, addressing the compliance gap. Screening covers wallet addresses only, encrypted balances and amounts stay hidden. First live application: the Steakhouse Confidential Prime USDC vault. Read more.
• CMTAT Confidential: CMTA launched CMTAT Confidential, bringing confidential balances to a leading security token standard, powered by Zama and built on OpenZeppelin's Confidential Contracts. Read more.
• Shielded Report Q2: our quarterly report on Protocol health, adoption, and ecosystem growth. Read the Q2 2026 edition, released July 27. Download report.

For builders

Season 3 closed with 188 submissions across 3 tracks and 9 winners: meet them.

Season 4: From Infrastructure to Applications challenges builders to create a confidential PoolTogether: encrypted deposits and winnings, verifiable winner selection. 5,000 cUSDT in rewards, up to 3 winners, and the top submission may get a professional OpenZeppelin audit toward production. Submissions close September 5, 2026.

→ Submit your bounty solution

What's next

• Confidential RFQ public launch in September, with more trading pairs
• Season 4 bounty closes September 5
• And more...

The reasons to stay offchain are gone. It's no longer a question of if institutional finance moves onchain, only when.

Additional Links

• Zama App: app.zama.org
• Zama on X: x.com/zama
• Zama on Telegram: t.me/zama_on_telegram
• Contact the team: zama.org/contact

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