Decrypt and Helius bring confidential transfers to Solana

By Nathan Brooks

Decrypt and Helius have announced a partnership to add confidential transfers to the Decrypt Money Account on Solana, allowing users to conceal transfer amounts from the public ledger, according to the companies. The integration uses Helius's Solana Privacy Rings and advances Decrypt's evolution into The Information Exchange, which brings news, trading and prediction markets together within a single account.

What changes for account users?

For account holders, the immediate change is deliberately narrow: a confidential transfer should resemble an ordinary Solana transfer and feel almost instant, but outside observers cannot see the amount sent.

The account is designed to work without seed phrases, gas fees or bridging. Helius product lead Tilo Palfner said: “We abstract the technology away so using a Decrypt Money Account feels like using a neobanking app.”

Under that interface, succinct zero-knowledge proofs let users prove that they own a balance and can spend it without revealing its size. The system addresses the exposure built into public wallets, which reveal holdings, transfers and trading history. Once linked to a person, that history can expose finances to anyone on the internet, a risk Helius applies to both individuals and companies.

Privacy currently applies only to sending funds. It does not yet cover:

• Jupiter-powered swaps on The Information Exchange
• Earn
• Prediction-market positions

For users, a private transfer therefore does not extend privacy across an entire Decrypt product journey.

Decrypt co-founder and COO Ilan Hazan said the company aims to be at the forefront of bringing finance on-chain and exceed traditional finance platforms in user experience, with privacy as a core component.

CPO Alex Solleiro called private transfer and trading pivotal to onboarding more users and use cases to on-chain finance, particularly The Information Exchange. Decrypt says it will support development and adoption of new privacy-powered workflows and deepen its value proposition. Helius presents Privacy Rings as a foundation for private swaps, lending and yield.

How the privacy layer works

Helius describes the rings as programmable, on-chain environments for encrypting money, markets and finance without leaving Solana. The company said the core programs were live on Solana mainnet in a November 10, 2026 announcement.

Certora, OtterSec and ZK Security audited the core programs, according to Helius. The default ring is permissionless and has no global auditor key.

Users can recover private balances directly from Solana without relying on a separate provider to store their encrypted data. In operational terms, recovery remains tied to Solana rather than to a separate encrypted-data custodian.

How compliance fits

Viewing keys let users share access to their private balances. According to Helius, blockchain analytics firms Range, Chainalysis, Elliptic and TRM Labs support wallet screening to identify sanctioned addresses.

Palfner said privacy and compliance need not conflict, but each application still must define and enforce its own compliance policies.

Institutional roadmap

Helius plans to release Custom Rings in the fourth quarter of 2026. Institutions could then set their own compliance controls and auditor access, extending beyond the permissionless default ring and its lack of a global auditor key.

Helius CEO and co-founder Mert Mumtaz said: “You can not hack what you cannot see.” He argued that throughput and latency are not crypto's final scaling constraints; privacy is. He said serious institutions and individuals will resist permanently exposing their financial identity, and that crypto cannot scale 1,000 times from its present level unless privacy becomes a first-class requirement.

The next scheduled change in Helius's roadmap comes in the fourth quarter of 2026, when Custom Rings are due; until Decrypt extends protection, confidential transfers will remain confined to sending funds rather than Jupiter-powered swaps, Earn or prediction-market positions.