Analytics platform Santiment has published its latest ranking of the top ten privacy-focused cryptocurrency projects by development activity over the past 30 days. The ranking, based on filtered GitHub data that tracks meaningful code contributions, reveals a significant concentration of developer energy, with notable gaps compared to current market valuations.
Chainlink (LINK) sits at the top of the list with a development activity score of 243.7, nearly 40% higher than the second-ranked project. This leadership is attributed to its recent integration of Zero-Knowledge Proofs into its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP v1.5), enabling banks to move funds between private and public blockchains without exposing transaction details. Despite not being a traditional privacy coin, Chainlink's market cap stands at $6.92 billion.
Aztec Network (AZTEC) ranks second with a score of 175.17, rising since the last update. The project focuses on private smart contracts on Ethereum and recently launched its CHONK upgrade, which allows generating complex privacy proofs on smartphones. Its market cap is $74.3 million.
Dash (DASH) takes third place with a score of 104.07 and a market cap of $433.83 million, making it one of the more established privacy coins. Zama (ZAMA), a project specializing in Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) that allows computation on encrypted data, ranks fourth with a score of 61.97. Its ZAMA token launched in February 2026.
Zcash (ZEC), with the second-largest market cap on the list at $3.95 billion, ranks seventh with a development score of just 25.07. This highlights a stark disconnect between its historical market position and current development pace. The project recently received regulatory relief from the SEC and is building an Ethereum-style Layer-2 called Ztarknet.
The list is rounded out by HOPR, NYM, Verge (XVG), Beam (BEAM), and Decred (DCR), with scores between 4.2 and 33. The data underscores that privacy technology in crypto has expanded into diverse areas including institutional finance, encrypted smart contracts, and network-level anonymity.
