Why ARX: MPC as the one privacy stack across money, compute and AI
Quote491 words
Bullish call$ARX−3.8%since this piece, moved against the callHow it played out ↓Argues Arcium's MPC covers what Zcash (no programs), Zama (FHE speed, 13-node committee) and Venice (TEE trust) each miss. ARX at $45M mcap sits 570x below ZEC and 32x below VVV, with C-SPL and Blackthorn not yet live.
Key claims
ZEC +84% in 30d to $25.8B mcap; ZAMA +95% in a week
ARX $45M mcap / $217M FDV
Arcium: 2.5M+ computations, 10M+ tx, 5 Solana mainnet apps
Privacy is one of the strongest narratives in crypto rn.
- $ZEC is up 84% in 30 days to a $25.8B mcap
- $ZAMA is up 95% this week alone
- $VVV is up 81% in a month
Each of them is winning one lane within the broader vertical rn.
However, my main bet rn is $ARX.
Why?
Because @Arcium might be the one to rule them all:
- Zcash is private money: the shielded pool, no programs inside it.
- Zama is private compute via FHE: programmable but still comparably slow, and shared state still needs a 13-node committee to decrypt, with 5 colluding nodes being able to read everything.
- Venice is private AI: inference in TEEs, so you trust the chip and the vendor.
@milianstx's post below explains why nobody covers more than one lane:
FHE is too slow for most things beyond confidential transfers (even tho tbf Zama has been scaling rapidly and recently also launched confidential Morpho vaults), and ZK can prove a tx without revealing the underlying data, but can't compute on shared state privately.
MPC on the other hand, is the one technology rn that does shared-state compute at speed, while not compromising on trust assumptions.
Arcium's Cerberus stays private with one honest node out of n (n being a small, permissioned cluster for now, so that guarantee only gets stronger as the node set decentralises). That's basically the same trust primitive FHE ends up relying on anyway, just with a stronger threshold and no ciphertext overhead.
The tradeoff for MPC is bandwidth and liveness, which makes sense tho for a compute layer (which is what Arcium ultimately is).
The Arcium endgame?
- Encrypted compute (live): 2.5M+ computations, 10M+ tx, 5 apps on Solana mainnet (e.g. Umbra or Zinc).
- C-SPL (coming): encrypted balances for any SPL token, and programs can own confidential accounts. Private DEXs, private lending, private payroll and much more. A.k.a. the Zcash use case but with programmability + composability on top.
- Blackthorn (coming): inference on encrypted data on standard Nvidia GPUs, CPU TEE out of the trust chain. Basically the Venice use case with a better trust model.
The market already pays $25.8B for private money and $1.5B for private AI.
$ARX is aiming at both, being valued at only $45M mcap / $217M FDV (570x and 32x below the above-mentioned main comps on mcap, still 119x and 11x on FDV).
And yes, it's up 30% this week, but the gap hasn't closed because the leaders ran too. Relatively speaking tho, I think that's temporary.
The discount probably still exists at the scale it does bc neither C-SPL nor Blackthorn is fully live. C-SPL is not on mainnet yet and lands venue by venue, and Blackthorn is early access, with no specific date on it yet either.
NFA ofc, but I'm pretty confident on the eventual $ARX repricing when the above all hits mainnet and turns into live products.
QUOTING @milianstx
the ultimate goal for arcium is to build the privacy stack for everything the market today falls short because most privacy projects can only do one or a very few things. this is mostly due to: 1) performance constraints (e.g. fhe is not fast enough for most use-cases outside
the ultimate goal for arcium is to build the privacy stack for everything the market today falls short because most privacy projects can only do one or a very few things. this is mostly due to: 1) performance constraints (e.g. fhe is not fast enough for most use-cases outside
1 image on X
How the call played out · since 23 Sep 2026
Prices as of 23 Oct 2026This piece takes a view on $ARX, so that move is read against the call. Other assets it covers are shown as context, not as calls.
−3.8%
Moved against the call · over 4 weeks
- At publication
- $0.222
- Now
- $0.213
- vs BTC
- +1.4%
- After 1 month
- −3.8%
- High since
- +32% 06 Oct 2026
- Low since
- −3.8% 23 Oct 2026
Mentioned for context
Since then
Zero has written 3 more pieces on Arcium and $ARX since this one.
- Arcium Blackthorn supply gap: 600 to 4,500 rentable confidential GPUs worldwideBullish call on $ARX
- Arcium Blackthorn vs Venice: private AI inference without the Intel TDX chipBullish call on $ARX
- Personal top 20 crypto watchlist grouped by narrativeBullish call on $ARX
Daily closes in USD from DefiLlama and Yahoo Finance. Only a bullish or bearish thesis is read as a call; explainers, maps and mentions are context. Not financial advice.