2026 is called the starting point of on-chain institutional finance, and this judgment is basically correct — but have you noticed that the current situation is actually quite awkward: most public chains either open the door wide to regulatory authorities on privacy issues or hide in anonymous black boxes, resulting in institutional investors being scared away. I’ve been observing the process of a certain EVM privacy chain from testing phase to mainnet launch for a while, and I faintly feel that they might have found that very difficult-to-maintain balance.

The most obvious improvement is the developer experience. Continuing to write in Solidity, MetaMask still connects, and the feeling of entering is the familiar studio, but tool efficiency has improved, and the process is smoother. The real difference lies here: your well-written contracts are directly deployed to the Layer 1 settlement layer, rather than being placed on a sidechain bridge as a "backup" as before. Cross-chain bridges have always been a headache; now, with this approach, assets are in the main chain ecosystem from the start, which indeed makes financial applications handling real funds much more reassuring.

However, the core competitiveness of this chain lies in its privacy solution called Hedger. It is currently in Alpha version; I experienced an early version — you can think of it as a "two-way invisible switch." Transaction information is fully encrypted externally, and no one can see your position size or trading movements, making it impossible for snipers and arbitrageurs to exploit; but once you authorize it to compliance review authorities, regulators can quickly verify the legality of the entire chain. This is not just simple invisibility, but rather giving control over transparency to users and the rules themselves. It must be admitted that the MiCA regulatory framework in Europe has already come into effect, and this "verifiable privacy" architecture has basically become a pass for institutional funds to enter.