Ayo Akinyele, Head of Engineering at RippleX, stated at XRP Seoul 2026 that, in addition to trust, scalability, and institutional infrastructure, privacy is a key issue that must be addressed in the adoption of the XRPL.
This direction builds on Ripple’s existing privacy roadmap, which holds that the regulated financial system requires confidentiality without sacrificing the auditability and neutrality of public blockchain infrastructure.
The key difference is that Ripple is not proposing to launch a private version of the XRPL. Instead, the network is directly developing optional disclosure privacy mechanisms at the protocol level.
XRPL aims to hide the amount, not the accountability mechanism.
The clearest example is "Confidential Transfers."
The official XRPL documentation on confidential transfers states that this system uses EC-ElGamal encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to conceal the balances and transfer amounts of Multi-Purpose Tokens from the public ledger.
Validators can verify the validity of transactions without seeing the underlying amounts. Meanwhile, the issuer can designate an auditor to decrypt balance information for regulatory or compliance purposes.
This creates an important middle ground for banks: enabling public settlement while safeguarding the privacy of financial information.
Coinpaper previously reported that the XRPL 3.3.0 upgrade has included ConfidentialTransfer in the amendment vote, along with Batch, Permission Delegation, and other institutional-focused features.
Banks need more than just KYC
As XRPL builds additional institutional control mechanisms, privacy is becoming increasingly important.
Developers are exploring permissioned liquidity pools, mechanisms that restrict AMM participation to users with verified credentials. Combined with Credentials, Permissioned Domains, and confidential token transfers, the emerging model no longer resembles anonymous DeFi, but rather a regulated financial infrastructure built on a public ledger.
Ripple has also specifically listed confidential collateral as an institutional use case. Banks may need to prove that collateral exists and meets requirements, without revealing the size of client positions, counterparties, or trading strategies. Its broader institutional DeFi roadmap also indicates that proof of reserves, private settlement, and compliance verification could all be potential applications of zero-knowledge proofs.