Odaily News: Privacy blockchain project Beldex has announced the completion of an $8 million funding round, led by Sigma Capital, with participation from NTC, Nxgen, Digital Consensus Fund, EAK Ventures, and other institutions. The new funds will be used for developer tools, privacy applications, protocol security, AI infrastructure development, and ecosystem expansion.Beldex is exploring the use of its privacy technology to protect the identity, payments, communications, and data processing of AI agents, including privacy-preserving AI identities, encrypted AI communications, confidential payments, secure AI execution, as well as research into technologies such as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and secure memory. (Decrypt)

Odaily Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published a new article introducing Diamond iO, a novel cryptographic obfuscation technique. This technology aims to address the extreme inefficiency of traditional indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) schemes, allowing programs to execute while hiding their internal logic and critical data. Traditional iO technology offers privacy protection but at a high computational cost. Diamond iO, by adopting more aggressive new cryptographic assumptions, improves computational efficiency from "cosmological time" to "planetary time," bringing it closer to practical application. Diamond iO is built on technologies such as Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). It encrypts programs, enabling users to execute the encrypted program and obtain correct outputs without viewing its internal code or hidden keys. This scheme introduces a new input encoding mechanism and conditional decryption method, reducing computational complexity while ensuring program logic is hidden. Its core application scenarios include protecting programs containing private keys, enabling secure software licensing, building trustless cryptographic services, and supporting blockchain and AI systems with stronger privacy guarantees.Diamond iO is still in its early research stages. Its security depends on novel cryptographic assumptions, including All-Product LWE and Evasive LWE, which require further research and validation. At the same time, the technology still faces efficiency challenges such as high computational overhead and circuit depth limitations. Researchers believe that by optimizing underlying hash functions, improving homomorphic encryption schemes, and reducing security parameter requirements, Diamond iO has the potential to become an important direction for advancing practical program obfuscation technology in the future.

Odaily reported that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recommended the "The Interfold" project in a post, stating that more people should learn about Interfold. It is a general implementation version of the MACI (Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) concept he has repeatedly called for over the past decade. Essentially, this project is a privacy protocol optimized for scenarios such as voting and secret auctions, allowing more people to pay attention to and understand this technological advancement.Vitalik also stated that the core mechanisms of Interfold include generating threshold encryption keys, users submitting votes on-chain with ZKP eligibility proofs, performing arbitrary computations within Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) followed by threshold decryption. This enables unconditional voter anonymity, Ethereum-level censorship resistance, and ensures correctness through ZK over FHE, among other strong security guarantees. The main limitation at present is the high cost of complex computations (such as multiplication operations); only additive vote counting is mature. Optimizations based on slashing are being advanced, with a long-term goal of implementing obfuscation techniques to eliminate reliance on M-of-N committees.

Odaily Planet Daily News: Privacy computing company Zama has acquired the enterprise-level token lifecycle management platform TokenOps, aiming to introduce fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) into institutional-grade token vesting, airdrops, and cap table management.Zama stated that TokenOps has processed over $2 billion in distribution business. Following the acquisition, issuers will be able to execute the entire lifecycle of token allocation, release schedules, and recipient identity on-chain using encryption, based on the ERC-7984 confidential token standard. This solution has already been deployed in KAIO's production environment, with its partner institutions including BlackRock, Hamilton Lane, and Brevan Howard. TokenOps will continue to operate as an independent brand after the acquisition.

Odaily News XRP Ledger has announced the integration of zero-knowledge infrastructure provider Boundless to support banks and asset management institutions in executing transactions that combine privacy protection with compliance on public chains.According to the introduction, this solution can conceal sensitive information such as transaction size, frequency, and counterparties, while still allowing regulators to conduct audits through selective disclosure and role-based access control, thereby striking a balance between privacy and compliance.This integration will support institutional-grade scenarios including cross-border B2B payments, fund and capital management, over-the-counter (OTC) trading, tokenized asset issuance, and on-chain trading and lending. Industry insiders believe that the conflict between public chain transparency and privacy needs has been a significant barrier to institutional adoption, and this solution aims to reduce the so-called "transparency tax."Meanwhile, competition in the privacy track continues to intensify. Technological approaches including zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) are accelerating their implementation, driving privacy capabilities from optional features to underlying infrastructure. Data shows that the tokenized asset market size has reached approximately $29.25 billion, with a monthly increase of about 7.9%. (Cointelegraph)

Odaily News According to an official announcement, BitMart will list Zama (ZAMA) at 21:00 on February 2 (UTC+8). The listing will open the ZAMA/USDT trading pair.The Zama protocol is a cross-chain privacy layer that uses Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to issue, manage, and trade assets privately on any L1 or L2.

Odaily News Vitalik posted an article today stating that 2026 is the year to regain computing self-sovereignty, emphasizing that he has begun reducing data leaks to centralized services. Vitalik mentioned that he switched to Fileverse encrypted documents and Signal/Simplex/Session messaging apps (all of which are decentralized open-source applications) last year, and in 2026, he will further transition to OpenStreetMap/Protonmail and decentralized social platforms to protect location and communication privacy.Vitalik also discussed the progress and challenges of locally deployed LLMs, suggesting that combining technologies like ZKP, TEE, and FHE could pave the way for efficient and privacy-preserving computation in the future.

Odaily News Zama announced that its mainnet staking functionality is now live. The ZAMA token has two utilities: fees and staking. ZAMA token fees paid by users will be burned by the protocol, while the protocol will mint tokens based on an initial set 5% annual issuance rate to pay operators. Operators need to stake ZAMA tokens to participate and earn rewards. 40% of the rewards are allocated to FHE nodes, and 60% are allocated to KMS nodes.

Odaily News According to data from GMGN , FHE experienced a rapid intraday increase, with its price once breaking through 0.115 USDT, reaching a maximum gain of over 60%. It has now retraced to approximately 0.099 USDT.

Odaily News: According to MGBX spot market data, ZAMA has surged above 0.2189 USDT and is currently trading at 0.2017 USDT.Zama is a cryptography company that builds open-source homomorphic encryption tools for developers. Its homomorphic encryption (FHE) is a technology that allows data to be processed without decryption. This can be used to create privacy-preserving smart contracts on top of public, permissionless blockchains, where only specific users can view transaction data and contract states.