Dash, a Layer 1 blockchain protocol with privacy-preserving features, announced on Thursday the mixing of Zcash’s “Orchard” shielded pool onto the Dash Evolution chain, a secondary layer on the L1 network that supports smart contract functionality.
According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the mixing will go live after cybersecurity testing is accomplished and is predicted to launch in March.
The announcement states that the mixing will initially support basic Zcash (ZEC) transfers from one party to a different on the Evolution chain, with later upgrades adding Orchard's privacy features for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
The price of DASH (DASH), the network’s native token, rose over 125% in January. Dash briefly reached an area high of around $96 on crypto exchange Binance before falling back to current levels.
Dash price performance shows two major peaks in 2025 and 2026, driven by the expansion of the privacy narrative. Source: TradingView
On-chain privacy protocols and privacy blockchain tokens have gained significant momentum in 2025 and early 2026, with proponents of the technology viewing them as a response to increased financial surveillance by governments and corporations.
Lack of privacy is holding back crypto payments because the technology comes under fire
“Lack of privacy could possibly be the missing link in crypto payment adoption,” said Changpeng Zhao (CZ), co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
Companies won’t adopt blockchain technology unless privacy protection tools can protect payments that contain sensitive details about worker compensation, CZ said.
Transaction data could also reveal details about key partnerships and other trade secrets to competitors, Avidan Abitbol, a former business development specialist for cryptocurrency project Kaspa, told Cointelegraph.
Agata Ferreira, assistant professor at Warsaw University of Technology, argues that true financial privacy is achieved through a mix of regulation, culture and code, and not only through protecting on-chain metadata.
According to critics of the technology, equivalent to writer and Bitcoin (BTC) advocate Saifedean Ammous, user anonymity can still be violated and ownership of privacy tokens will be determined through forensic evaluation and law enforcement investigations.
Saifedean Ammous, writer of The Bitcoin Standard, talks to Cointelegraph's Gareth Jenkinson about on-chain privacy. Source: Cointelegraph
In January 2026, Dubai's Financial Services Authority (DFSA), a financial regulator within the emirate, banned privacy tokens, including ZEC and XMR (XMR), the native token of the Monero privacy protocol.
The ban doesn’t prevent residents from owning the tokens, but prohibits regulated crypto exchanges from selling the tokens to recent users, highlighting tensions between government regulators and privacy technology.
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