Privacy for Real-World Finance
The next wave of institutional adoption depends on combining the benefits of an open network with the privacy people expect from their everyday financial services.
The Stellar network already processes billions of dollars in payments quarterly and is uniquely positioned to show that configurable privacy on a public chain can work at scale.
Stellar provides the foundational primitives that enable multiple interoperable privacy solutions to emerge, each designed for different use cases, controls, and institutional requirements.
Open by default. Private when needed.
For Institutions and Enterprises
Wanting to protect certain financial data while benefiting from the openness of a public blockchain, the Stellar network has solutions and tools that let them configure privacy on their own terms.
For Developers
Building applications with privacy features, the Stellar network provides privacy primitives for controlled data sharing along with a trusted network of institutions ready to support adoption.
Privacy on Stellar
Our privacy strategy is guided by the principles that blockchains should be open and transparent by default, while privacy should be configurable and compliance-minded from the start.
Open & Transparent
The Stellar network is open by design, providing the transparency and interoperability institutions need to enable auditability and verifiability, build institutional trust, and deliver the scale and liquidity of a global network.
Opt-in Configurable Privacy
The Stellar network lets privacy to be opt-in and configurable at the application layer, like any other asset-specific feature. This gives developers the flexibility to innovate and institutions the ability to safeguard confidential information when it matters, where it matters.
Compliance-Ready
Compliance-focused privacy requires compliance considerations to be built into the design of the tool from the start. The privacy strategy for Stellar prioritizes support for privacy applications and tools that allow developers, asset issuers, and regulated institutions to configure privacy for their use case while addressing corresponding compliance obligations.
This can include access controls and association sets that help mitigate misuse by illicit actors, together with view keys and other disclosure mechanisms that support appropriate oversight, reporting, and compliance review where required.
Why privacy and openness don’t have to be a trade-off
You don't have to sit in either camp, there is value in verifiability, traceability and transparency. We need to protect and preserve that, but there’s ways to do that while still delivering institutional privacy.
Denelle Dixon on block by block, April 2026
Builders are putting privacy into practice
In January 2026, the X-Ray protocol upgrade positioned the Stellar network for configurable privacy onchain. Developers can now build configurable privacy infrastructure with Stellar smart contracts using advanced primitives built for efficient verification on a public blockchain. These solutions can support enterprise payments, treasury management, institutional settlement, and tokenized financial assets while preserving the openness and interoperability of the Stellar network.
Confidential Tokens
Allow for private payments between public addresses, keeping the value sent between two parties and their resulting balances confidential.
Stellar Private Payments (SPP)
Allow users to keep their address, transaction amounts, and balances private. SPP is a configurable open-source privacy pool implementation on the Stellar network by Nethermind.
ZK-Verifiers
Low-cost, onchain zero-knowledge proof verification, including support for RISC Zero/Groth16 and Noir/Ultrahonk.
By bringing privacy as a configurable layer, Stellar gives institutions and developers what they need for the next wave of adoption: The ability to choose between transparency and privacy when the situation demands it.
Rekt Media
Use cases
For over a decade, the Stellar network has been used by institutions and enterprises around the globe. With new privacy-preserving capabilities designed for real-world financial applications, Stellar provides an open foundation for institutions and developers to explore confidential finance with scalability, interoperability, and real-world utility in mind.
Payroll
Treasury management
B2B and B2C payments
Institutional settlement
Latest on privacy
FAQ
The Stellar approach to privacy is unique because it is opt-in and configurable at the application layer. This allows developers to innovate while giving institutions the ability to safeguard confidential information. This flexibility is not commonly found in other blockchain networks.
The privacy strategy for Stellar prioritizes support for privacy applications and tools designed with compliance in mind. These may include access controls, association proofs, view keys, and other disclosure tools. Together, these features can help developers, asset issuers, and regulated institutions configure the level of privacy appropriate for their use case while addressing their corresponding compliance obligations.
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) supports privacy development by funding and backing ecosystem builders. It helps move the best ideas from theory to practice, fostering innovation in privacy-preserving applications.
Open-source solutions are crucial to the privacy strategy of Stellar. The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) contributes to privacy prototypes like Confidential Tokens, which the ecosystem can extend and deploy. This collaborative approach helps build robust privacy standards.
Privacy pools are smart contract-based systems that help users transact more privately by breaking the public link between the source of funds and subsequent transfers or withdrawals. They can be designed with association sets, which apply defined compliance criteria to deposits to help mitigate misuse by illicit actors. This allows participants to benefit from privacy while demonstrating that their transaction is associated with a set of deposits that has been screened against defined compliance criteria.
Developers and researchers can get involved by applying to the Stellar Community Fund, pursuing research grants, or joining discussions on platforms like Discord. Stellar encourages collaboration to define real-world privacy on a public, permissionless network.