Zama Newsletter: Shielded Q3, $100M+ in Confidential Vaults, Confidential Tokens Across DeFi, and More

In September, confidential DeFi emerged as a new category. In October, it started becoming part of the tools people already use. From vaults to wallets and more DeFi infrastructure and platforms. Shielded Q3 captures the progress so far.

Here’s a recap of October.

Shielded Q3 is live

Shielded is Zama's quarterly institutional report on the Zama Protocol. The Q3 edition covers the quarter confidential DeFi went to scale, with guests from Bitwise, Hypernative, Utila, and Zerion, presented by The Rollup.

Read the report
Watch the episode

DefiLlama Report: A look into Confidential DeFi

A Look Into Confidential DeFi is DefiLlama Research's first report on the category. The report presents that Confidential DeFi reached $197.6M in TVL in September, up 170% in 18 months, with FHE accounting for 42% of the market. It also covers why institutions need confidentiality, how the category formed, the technology behind the Zama Protocol, and the metrics to track it.

Download the report

By the numbers

Shielded TVL on the Zama Protocol has passed $122M, up from $90M+ in September, with $102M+ shielded in confidential vaults (snapshot as of October 31, 2026).

Track live metrics on DefiLlama or Dune.

Also this month

Confidential tokens are live in Zerion Wallet: Zerion users on Ethereum can manage confidential assets next to their public holdings. Balances and transfer amounts stay encrypted onchain. Read more.
Merkl rewards are now claimable: $cZAMA earned through Merkl campaigns on the confidential vaults can be claimed directly in the Zama App, paid through confidential transfers, so position and reward stay private from deposit to payout. Read more.
Zama joins the Open Transaction Layer as a founding partner: OTL is an industry initiative building shared protocols for identity, messaging, and transaction coordination across institutions, wallets, and agents. Zama brings the confidentiality layer. Read more.

Around the ecosystem

TOKEN2049 week in Singapore: one week of conversations across institutional finance, DeFi, and onchain confidentiality. See the recap.
- Kyle O'Brien took the main stage at DAYS on how privacy unlocks trillions in value onchain. Watch the keynote.
- Irene Patrikios introduced the Confidential Vault Stack at Vault Summit: existing vaults, strategies, and distribution stay in place, confidentiality becomes a layer on top. Watch the keynote.
Zama CEO Rand Hindi joined DefiLlama live to discuss the findings of A Look Into Confidential DeFi. Listen to the full conversation or read the article.
Raycash on the Private Coffee podcast: how the self-custodial money account on confidential stablecoins is build on Zama, with 75K on the waitlist ahead of launch. Watch the episode.
Trick or treat with Zerion: 40 wallets split $2,666 in tokens and confidential tokens. Knock on the door for a chance to win before November 6.
FHE.org 2027: registration is open for the sixth edition of the FHE.org conference, on April 4, 2027, in Seattle. Register.

Events

Meet the Zama team around the world:

The Zama team will head to London during the next two weeks. Check the schedule.
More events are coming up in Spain, Singapore and Switzerland. Visit our events page for more details.

Contact us to book a meeting

What's next

Confidential vaults expanding to more DeFi venues.
The Zama Protocol integrating with more of the infrastructure and platforms that onchain finance already relies on.

Vaults are just the beginning. Confidentiality will eventually become the default across all of onchain finance.

On to November.