All entries below were submitted by community members. This longlist reflects what builders, researchers, and privacy advocates themselves found most exciting this year.

From zkVM acceleration and FHE breakthroughs to privacy wallets, infrastructure primitives, and post-quantum milestones, 2025 shows innovation happening across every layer of the privacy stack.

Out of 57 longlisted innovations:

• 20 Wallets & Privacy Applications

• 15 Protocol & Infrastructure Innovations

• 8 Zero-Knowledge & zkVM Advances

• 6 Fully Homomorphic Encryption & Advanced Cryptography Developments

• 4 Post-Quantum & Next-Generation Cryptography Milestones

• 4 Ecosystem & Institutional Privacy Developments

Below is the full longlist, grouped by category for easier navigation.
This is not a ranking.

• Bitchat (offline meshed messaging)

• Fileverse's Dsheets

• Freedom Browser

  

• Anonymous Webs of Trust

• Aztec Ignition Launch

• Circle X Aleo

• Counter Galois Onion

• DarkIRC

• dstack

• EIP-7702

• EIP-8105

• EVM bytecode obfuscation for private transfers

• libp2p-mix

• MachinaIO

• General zkVMs

• Longfellow

• ZKPs in Google Wallet

• Institutional adoption and real world ZK use cases

• Proximity gaps conjecture disproven

• Real time ETH block proving with Sp1 Hypercube

• zkVM acceleration!

• ZK wormholes/Plausible Deniability @eip7503

• Zama FHEVM

• Zama: Bootstrapping TFHE ciphertexts in less than one millisecond

• High-throughput threshold FHE decryption

• Secret Sharing with Snitching to address keyholder collusion in threshold cryptography

• Silent Threshold Encryption with One-Shot Adaptive Security

• Quasi-Linear Indistinguishability Obfuscation via Mathematical Proofs of Equivalence and Applications

• Post-quantum tipping point with ML-KEM

• FHE advancements

• Binius

• Monero Full-Chain Membership Proofs

• IPTF established

• GrapheneOS working with OEM on new phone

• Privacy Pools V2

• Popup cities

• PsyDAO

The 2025 innovation cycle shows a privacy ecosystem maturing across multiple layers simultaneously.

Wallet UX is improving.
Zero-knowledge systems are accelerating.
FHE performance barriers are falling.
Post-quantum readiness is moving into production.
Institutional actors are engaging more directly with privacy primitives.

Innovation is no longer theoretical — it is shipping.

• Event of the Year — Longlist

• Projects Category — Longlist

• Doxxer of the Year — Longlist

All entries below were submitted by community members. This longlist reflects what builders, researchers, and privacy advocates themselves found most exciting this year.

From zkVM acceleration and FHE breakthroughs to privacy wallets, infrastructure primitives, and post-quantum milestones, 2025 shows innovation happening across every layer of the privacy stack.

Out of 57 longlisted innovations:

• 20 Wallets & Privacy Applications

• 15 Protocol & Infrastructure Innovations

• 8 Zero-Knowledge & zkVM Advances

• 6 Fully Homomorphic Encryption & Advanced Cryptography Developments

• 4 Post-Quantum & Next-Generation Cryptography Milestones

• 4 Ecosystem & Institutional Privacy Developments

Below is the full longlist, grouped by category for easier navigation.
This is not a ranking.

• Bitchat (offline meshed messaging)

• Fileverse's Dsheets

• Freedom Browser

  

• Kohaku (Ethereum privacy client & wallet)

• Mullvad DAITA (AI traffic analysis protection)

• Unforgettable Fuzzy Extractor

• Private Voting Platforms

• Private FaceMatch

• Rarimo and Bionetta

  

• Railgun - privacy multisig

• Session Protocol V2

• SelfID

• Web3PrivacyNow Explorer

• Zashi (with @near_intents swaps)

• zkTLS

• Veil Cash

• Solana launching Confidential Balances

• Monero Full-Chain Membership Proofs

• Anonymous Webs of Trust

• Aztec Ignition Launch

• Circle X Aleo

• Counter Galois Onion

• DarkIRC

• dstack

• EIP-7702

• EIP-8105

• EVM bytecode obfuscation for private transfers

• libp2p-mix

• MachinaIO

• NEAR Intents

• Uniswap CCA (Continuous Clearing Auctions)

• TOR x Ethereum initiatives

• General zkVMs

• Longfellow

• ZKPs in Google Wallet

• Institutional adoption and real world ZK use cases

• Proximity gaps conjecture disproven

• Real time ETH block proving with Sp1 Hypercube

• zkVM acceleration!

• ZK wormholes/Plausible Deniability @eip7503

• Zama FHEVM

• Zama: Bootstrapping TFHE ciphertexts in less than one millisecond

• High-throughput threshold FHE decryption

• Secret Sharing with Snitching to address keyholder collusion in threshold cryptography

• Silent Threshold Encryption with One-Shot Adaptive Security

• Quasi-Linear Indistinguishability Obfuscation via Mathematical Proofs of Equivalence and Applications

• Post-quantum tipping point with ML-KEM

• FHE advancements

• Binius

• Monero Full-Chain Membership Proofs

• IPTF established

• GrapheneOS working with OEM on new phone

• Privacy Pools V2

• Popup cities

• PsyDAO

The 2025 innovation cycle shows a privacy ecosystem maturing across multiple layers simultaneously.

Wallet UX is improving.
Zero-knowledge systems are accelerating.
FHE performance barriers are falling.
Post-quantum readiness is moving into production.
Institutional actors are engaging more directly with privacy primitives.

Innovation is no longer theoretical — it is shipping.

• Event of the Year — Longlist

• Projects Category — Longlist

• Doxxer of the Year — Longlist