i am a proponent of privacy very simply because its the counter intuitive thesis to tightening regulations.
$ZEC has led the privacy season but there are a lot more projects that are building in the privacy space.
S tier:
$ZEC - the bitcoin for privacy outperformed every asset
$NIL - humanity first blind computer
$NEAR - one of the strongest architectures for AI Agents right now, agentic payments, low fees, chain abstraction @Grayscale onboard
A tier:
$CC - institutional private chain, huge beneficiary of regulation
$AZTEC - leading privacy-first Layer 2 on Ethereum
$OCTRA - open-sourced the core HFHE implementation with public benchmarks
B tier:
$H - zk verification of proof of humanity
$STRK - zk execution Layer scaling Ethereum
$ROSE - makes any application private and verifiable, no matter where it runs
C tier:
$DUSK - privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure for institutional-grade finance
hows $XMR not here?