Zcash’s sudden resurgence isn’t just one other rotation, argues Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz; it’s a re-centering of crypto on first ideas of cryptography and person alternative. In a wide-ranging dialog on Messari’s “Absolutely Diluted” (Oct. 23) with host Dylan Bane and Messari researchers, Mumtaz framed Zcash as “secret Bitcoin”—a full-stack, zero-leakage design for cash that Bitcoin’s earliest architects needed however couldn’t ship with 2010-era tooling.
Zcash Proves Satoshi Proper
“The best conceptual technique to perceive that is that it’s a secret Bitcoin. It’s an encrypted Bitcoin,” Mumtaz stated, invoking early discussion board posts from Satoshi and Hal Finney. “You have got discussion board posts of Satoshi and Hal [Finney] saying issues like, ‘If we knew tips on how to add ZK proofs to Bitcoin, it could make it a greater Bitcoin.’ However that is 2010 and so they didn’t have the tech. And since then, the tech has been made.” In his telling, that lineage issues: Zcash inherits Bitcoin’s financial template whereas changing probabilistic obfuscation with “pure encryption.”
if you wish to perceive why sure Bitcoin maxis are violently coping and lashing out a couple of small 3B coin
they’re threatened and have misplaced the plot
Satoshi in 2010: if we might add ZK to Bitcoin, a a lot better BiTC could be attainable. Sadly, I don’t understand how. pic.twitter.com/2c4Y5SIhT6
— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) October 21, 2025
Mumtaz’s critique of “bolt-on” privateness was unambiguous. Privateness, he argued, just isn’t a function toggle; it’s a system property that should be designed from the bottom as much as reduce info leakage throughout all the stack—wallets, RPCs, mempools, validators, bridges, and utility UX. “Privateness just isn’t, in my opinion, one thing that may be bolted on,” he stated.
“You must begin from first ideas and strategy the issue from a vertically built-in full-stack resolution.” He contrasted Zcash’s shielded pool with approaches like Monero and mixers that depend on decoys: “With Monero… you’re introducing probabilistic decoys… it’s that cups-and-ball recreation… with Zcash there isn’t a obfuscation, it’s a pure encryption—if the ball simply didn’t exist in any respect.”
The fast catalyst behind Zcash’s rally, Mumtaz prompt, was much less a single headline than a confluence: product-level UX enhancements, a shifting coverage backdrop, and a spotlight—each supportive and hostile—compounding on social media. He pointed to the brand new Zashi pockets as a turning level: “Persons are really ready to make use of this new Zashi pockets to have some enjoyable… sending one another non-public messages and shielding stuff and tipping one another.”
He additionally argued the market had “over-indexed on extraordinarily bizarre cash” whereas neglecting “privateness beliefs,” leaving Zcash’s market cap “pathetically low” relative to its potential in the meanwhile he started highlighting it.
Regulation loomed over privateness the previous couple of years. Mumtaz was blunt in regards to the chilling impact of enforcement on privateness R&D: “Individuals had been frightened of going to jail for even launching tokens, not to mention writing privateness code. And there’s folks nonetheless in jail for this.” He sees components of the US shifting in a friendlier route underneath US President Donald Trump, whereas components of Europe transfer towards surveillance and scanning of personal messages.
That divergence makes long-range forecasting tough, he cautioned, but it surely reinforces why the trade ought to “guard zealously folks’s proper to privateness” as crypto’s authorized standing improves elsewhere. “There’s folks in jail for writing privateness code, however not for launching scams. That looks as if a reasonably large downside that we have to appropriate.”
Bitcoin, Solana And ZEC
On the perennial query—why not add strong privateness to Bitcoin straight?—Mumtaz cited each governance inertia and technical realities. Bitcoin core modifications are arduous by design, he stated, and privateness calls for greater than a script-level patch. “Except you might be designing with leaks minimized from the underside up, the leaks sort of add up… It simply takes one leak to compromise that privateness.”
Zcash’s roadmap featured prominently. Mumtaz expects the Tachyon work spearheaded by Sean Bowe to handle “state development” and lay “foundations for scaling,” cleansing up legacy design decisions that waste compute, corresponding to brute-decoding notes. He referred to as for pragmatic price markets to mitigate spam and for bettering mining decentralization as value motion attracts new hashrate.
However he rejected, in its present kind, the “Crosslink” hybrid PoW/PoS finality proposal: “It’s a foul concept… With a privateness system particularly, the extra shifting items you introduce, the extra assault floor will increase… It’s unclear to me what precisely you’re gaining from this apart from sort of a brand new finality time.” If given a token-holder vote, he stated he would vote towards it except considerably revised.
Mumtaz repeatedly returned to an “atomic unit” framing of privateness: info leakage. He prolonged that lens to bridges and cross-ecosystem liquidity. Helius helped bridge ZEC publicity into Solana through NEAR, however he careworn customers hand over Zcash’s privateness after they maintain it on Solana. “As soon as that asset is on Solana, you don’t have the privateness advantages… You possibly can bridge it again and deposit within the shielded pool… you then get the privateness again, however whilst you’re on Solana you’re not going to have the identical privateness because the non-public blockchain.” The utility, for now, is market entry and DeFi composability relatively than end-to-end confidentiality.
On this episode, Messari Analysis crew sit down with @0xMert_ , CEO of @heliuslabs
They unpack:
• The evolving privateness panorama in crypto
• Zcash’s resurgence
• Solana’s rising DeFi ecosystem
• Regulatory and technical hurdles pic.twitter.com/f8N1Uqtk1k— Messari (@MessariCrypto) October 23, 2025
The market meta, he conceded, is cyclical as a result of consideration is finite. The target is to ratchet the ground greater every cycle by changing narrative into sturdy engineering and smart laws. “It’s on the builders… to make use of that momentum… to truly drive ahead smart laws and harden the engineering of those techniques such that they endure in scale and are usable for many individuals.”
Requested to handicap the 2030 leaderboard, he demurred on exact ordering however volunteered a long-horizon view through which Zcash belongs within the dialog alongside Bitcoin and Solana: “When you had been to inform me 20 years then I’m going to say Bitcoin, Solana, ZEC.”
At press time, ZEC traded at $267.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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