Decrypt Money Account adds confidential transfers via Helius privacy rings

What happened

Helius has brought Solana Privacy Rings to mainnet, giving the network shielded pools in which balances and transfer amounts are encrypted while transactions still settle on Solana itself. The launch took place on Nov. 10, 2026. Decrypt's Money Account is among the first products to use the system for confidential transfers, together with the mining and staking app ORE and cross-chain service Aurora Intents, according to the company's announcement.

Helius said Backpack, DFlow, Jupiter, Squads and Titan are among the teams working on integrations, and that developers can begin connecting through its APIs and software development kit. The Solana Foundation, which describes the approach as "public by default, private by choice," lists Privacy Rings in its documentation as being in beta.

In practice, a user deposits tokens into a ring, sends them privately to another Solana wallet, and withdraws them back to an ordinary public balance whenever they choose. Funds stay in the owner's custody throughout, since each transaction requires their signature. Rings support SOL as well as SPL and Token-2022 tokens, and encrypted data is stored on Solana's ledger rather than on a separate layer-2 network or sequencer.

The first permissionless ring provides confidentiality rather than full anonymity: the asset and amount of a private transfer are hidden, but sender and recipient addresses remain visible. Moving money into or out of a ring from a public wallet also reveals the asset and amount, while users who on-ramp directly from fiat through a supported provider keep those details hidden from the start, Helius says. Balances can be read with a viewing key, either decrypted on the user's device or delegated to a provider that cannot spend the funds.

Why it matters

Every Solana transaction is public by default, which is useful for verifying the network but awkward for a business paying salaries, a trader building a position or anyone who would rather not display their savings. Because rings run natively on mainnet, private balances sit alongside the same stablecoins, tokenized assets and DeFi liquidity as public ones, which distinguishes the design from privacy systems that ask users to bridge to a separate network. Helius also argues that regulated firms using custom rings could keep their activity confidential while still drawing on the same liquidity as everyone else.

What the data shows

Helius says the core programs and zero-knowledge circuits were audited by Certora, OtterSec and ZK Security, with formal verification still under way and expected to finish by the end of 2026. Engineers from the Solana Foundation, Blueshift and Zcash took part in the trusted setup ceremony that generates the parameters the proofs rely on, and the code is published on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 licence. Each private transfer carries a Groth16 zk-SNARK that Helius says can be generated in tens of milliseconds, either by a service provider or on the user's own device, and settles in a single Solana transaction.

Background

Privacy has become a busier corner of Solana this year. The Foundation's documentation lists two other tools besides rings: Confidential Balances, a Token-2022 extension that encrypts balances and transfer amounts while keeping accounts public, and Private Channels, private execution environments run by an institution. Helius chief executive Mert Mumtaz publicly asked for protocol names in May, a discussion that drew in Ripple chief technology officer emeritus David Schwartz, and in late May Umbra announced confidential vesting with Streamflow. The launch also followed a difficult stretch: Privacy Cash temporarily paused deposits after the October 2026 Binance hack, saying it wanted to keep bad actors off its product after stolen funds reached its pools, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

What to watch

Custom Rings remain under audit, with a mainnet target of the fourth quarter of 2026. They are meant to add configurable controls such as approved participants, blocked recipients, spending freezes, extra signatures, emergency pauses and auditor access, and how those rules are enforced will shape how regulated users adopt the system. Screening is the other area to follow: Helius says it works with the analytics firms Range, Chainalysis and Elliptic on wallet screening, while the default ring leaves addresses, deposits and withdrawals visible onchain.

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