Privacy on demand: why COTI believes confidentiality will drive crypto’s next breakout
Transparent by default—it’s a defining trait of public blockchains. But for Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of COTI Network, that same transparency is a blocker to adoption. In episode 272 of Web3 with Sam Kamani, Shahaf lays out a compelling case: without scalable privacy, crypto can’t serve the institutions, trading strategies, or real-world assets it promises to.
So, what’s COTI doing about it? A lot more than theory.
They’ve built a garbled-circuit-based EVM—an execution layer that encrypts every input, output, and state change, without sacrificing speed. Think: 1,000x faster than zero-knowledge tech stacks, and battle-tested in production today.
Let’s unpack the key ideas and why Shahaf predicts a coming “privacy summer” to rival DeFi Summer.
From payment rails to privacy infrastructure
COTI’s story began in 2017, building scalable payment rails for crypto. But as institutional use cases evolved, it became clear that something critical was missing: confidentiality.
In Shahaf’s words, “you can’t onboard real-world finance if every transaction is open for competitors to dissect.”
The pivot? Building a garbled-circuit-based virtual machine, capable of encrypted computation at scale—an approach that differs fundamentally from slower, proof-heavy privacy tech like ZK-SNARKs.
This privacy EVM now powers ProX, COTI’s perpetual DEX with private order flow, CEX-level liquidity, and autonomous AI trading agents. No front-running. No custody risk. No leaking alpha.
Privacy on demand: modular, chain-agnostic
One of the most exciting features is COTI’s “privacy on demand” module. Rather than forcing dApps to migrate to a new chain, COTI acts as a confidential compute layer that any Solana, Ethereum, or Sui application can route through.
This unlocks:
- Privacy-preserving payments
- Front-running-resistant DeFi
- Federated learning for AI models—without exposing datasets
- CBDC and RWA settlement with selective disclosure for regulators
It’s privacy as infrastructure—not an app, but a protocol-level primitive.
Earn, build, and participate
Shahaf also teased COTI’s upcoming Earn-Create-Build platform. The idea? Open the doors for non-devs to:
- Test dApps and earn rewards
- Create content and be compensated
- Launch projects using low-code and no-code tools
On the ecosystem side, COTI is launching a node license sale, offering stakers a share of transaction fees and incentives to power the network’s growth.
Why “Privacy Summer” may be next
Shahaf’s bet is bold: just as DeFi Summer in 2020 brought liquidity mining and protocol experimentation into the mainstream, 2025 could bring a wave of privacy-first protocols solving real adoption barriers.
In an era where AI is automating trades, compliance is tightening, and tokenized real-world assets are gaining ground, privacy isn’t optional—it’s foundational.
And COTI is shipping the stack for it.
Listen to the episode
Spotify: Listen here
Apple: Listen here
