DL Research maps Web3 privacy landscape, showing how ZK, FHE, and MPC each solve different problems while exposing trade-offs shaping the future of secure on-chain systems

Zama's January mainnet Dutch auction pulled 11,103 bidders with $118.5M committed, but FHE ops still run ~100x slower than plaintext — bid-then-reveal works, high-throughput DEX matching doesn't, and that gap won't close without custom ASICs. Hybrid stacks like Nillion and Arcium are already orchestrating MPC + FHE + ZK per-operation, making the "pick one" trilemma dead on arrival. ZK's still the only one where unencrypted data never leaves the device — FHE trust sits with whoever holds the decryption keys, which is where most regulator-friendly "confidential compliance" ends up.

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