An Exilist research report points out that on February 20, 2026, Upbit decided to list its privacy infrastructure project, Aztec, on the Korean won market, a move significant for the adoption of privacy technology in South Korea. Despite regulatory risks and exchange review standards, Upbit simultaneously opened trading pairs for Aztec in both BTC and USDT. This reflects that privacy technology is becoming an important application layer on the Ethereum platform. Exilist explains that this development has significant commercial implications.
Meanwhile, Zama, a leading fully homomorphic crypto company, has also garnered significant attention. Zama held a token generation event in February 2026, but initial market reaction fell short of expectations. Despite achieving a valuation of over $10 billion in the private market, its fully diluted valuation at the time of its IPO hovered around $200 million, reflecting a more cautious market sentiment. This is partly due to the fact that the "holy grail" narrative anticipated by early investors like Multicoin Capital remains seen as an expensive toy by ordinary investors.
Despite market assessments, discussions about Zama's technological potential remain active. Exilist commented that Zama mentions the immense potential of FHE as a data security mathematical tool in the artificial intelligence and robotics markets, and is actively exploring its possibilities as a long-term infrastructure. Zama aims to overcome infrastructure limitations through technological leaps and has proposed a three-phase roadmap covering algorithm optimization, hardware acceleration, and hybrid architecture.
Despite this technological prospect, the future of Zama and FHE appears to hinge on the extent to which speed and resource constraints can be addressed. Whether it can overcome the market's economic logic remains to be seen, but Zama's technological vision is undoubtedly very strong. If industry demand for complete data security based on FHE grows, Zama's strategic position is expected to be further strengthened. The Exilist research report concludes that this vision has the potential to become a reality.
