Zama is the best-funded team in fully homomorphic encryption and its protocol is live on Ethereum, with confidential Morpho vaults, cUSDT and private swaps in use. The token has risen ~142% since its 2 Feb 2026 listing while BTC and ETH fell, peaking at $0.10 in late September. The weak side is supply: only ~22% of the 11.3B tokens circulate, FDV is 4.4 times market cap, staking mints ~5% a year, fee burn is not yet visible, and a larger team and investor tranche starts unlocking in Feb 2027.
Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$0.0833
+13.3% 24h · −14% 30d · CoinGecko 21 Oct
Market cap
$212.2M
rank #182 · FDV $943.4M, no max supply
24h volume
$16.5M
7.8% of market cap
From ATH
−22%
ATH $0.1074, Sep 2026
2026 YTD
+142%
$0.0344 → $0.0833
Staked
~63%
of circulating ZAMA · Q2 Shielded report, Jul 2026
The last 12 months
TechTokenomicsMarketProductAdoptionUpcoming
Daily closes from CoinGecko, 2 Feb 2026 (listing) to 21 Oct 2026.
Key events
1
30 Dec 25Mainnet live on Ethereum. Zama Protocol goes live and completes the first confidential stablecoin transfer on Ethereum.
2
21 Jan 26Sealed-bid token auction. Public auction raises about $118M; staking with 18 operators starts the same month.
3
02 Feb 26ZAMA lists, falls to $0.018. Trading opens near $0.034 and halves to a $0.0181 close by 13 Feb.
4
Jun 26Confidential USDC vault. First confidential Morpho vault with Steakhouse Financial reaches $40M within seven weeks.
5
21 Jul 26Elliptic compliance tie-up. Reported partnership to add compliance screening to confidential apps; price +50% in a week.
6
15 Sep 2616 vaults and Zama Swap. Confidential access to 16 Morpho vaults across five curators, plus private swaps on Ethereum.
7
23 Sep 26Peak at $0.10. Vault launch rally takes ZAMA from $0.050 to a $0.1015 close in five days.
8
24 Sep 26ZAMA token on Solana. Token bridged to Solana via Sunrise, trading on Raydium and DFlow.
9
02 Nov 26Monthly unlock ~115M ZAMA. Regular 1% release under the 60-month schedule, about $9.5M at today's price.
10
Feb 27One-year cliff unlock. Largest scheduled release so far, as team, investor and treasury tranches start vesting.
How a confidential cUSDT transfer works on Zama
Sender
Wraps USDT into cUSDT
Wallet encrypts the amount with the network key and attaches a proof of the input.
→
Ethereum contract
Records encrypted handles
The ERC-7984 token contract stores only ciphertext references; observers see that a transfer happened, not how much.
→
Coprocessors
Compute on ciphertexts
Operators run the FHE maths off-chain (balance check, debit, credit) and post matching results.
→
Gateway
Verifies proofs, charges fees
Checks input proofs and handles decryption and bridging requests; fees are paid in ZAMA and burned.
→
Key service (MPC)
Threshold decryption
Operators holding key shares decrypt only for authorised parties, never alone.
→
Receiver
Sees own new balance
Decrypts privately in the wallet; can unwrap to plain USDT at any time.
Where ZAMA comes in: the gateway fees for proofs, decryption and bridging are paid in ZAMA and burned (often by the app or relayer, not the user), and operators must stake ZAMA, earning ~5% minted rewards. The value moving is cUSDT, not ZAMA, so token demand depends on fee volume and staking.
Usage and adoption
USD per year at $0.083 (next 12 months, estimated)
Fee burn
not published
One-off burn (unsold sale tokens)
~$2.4M
Burn needed to offset staking mint
~$47M
Staking rewards minted (~5%)
~$47M
Monthly unlocks (12 × 1%)
~$115M+
Values in USD millions. Minting: ~5% of 11.33B ZAMA ≈ 566M a year; total supply has grown from 11.0B to 11.33B since genesis. Unlocks: 12 monthly releases of ~114.6M ZAMA, before the larger 2 Feb 2027 tranche, whose size is not counted. Fees are 100% burned, but neither Tokenomist nor Zama publishes a burn total; a ChainCatcher analysis says usage is still far from offsetting minting.
weak signal
Fee burn
Not published
Every fee is burned by design; no public total yet, which suggests it is still small.
medium signal
Shielded value locked
$39.6M
Q2 Shielded report (27 Jul 2026). A ChainCatcher estimate puts it near $78M later, partly incentive-driven.
medium signal
Confidential Morpho vaults
16 vaults
First USDC vault hit $40M in seven weeks; curators include Steakhouse, Wintermute, Bitwise.
medium signal
cUSDT volume
$131M
Cumulative shielded volume by mid-Sep 2026; cUSDT TVL only $7.7M.
weak signal
Staked
~63% of circ.
High staking cuts float but is paid by new issuance.
Real money is starting to use confidential DeFi on Ethereum, tens of millions of dollars rather than billions. For the token the missing number is fee burn: until it is published and grows toward the ~$47M a year minted for stakers, ZAMA is net inflationary on top of heavy unlocks.
Project
What it is
A protocol that adds confidentiality to existing blockchains using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE): smart contracts compute on encrypted balances and amounts without decrypting them. Live on Ethereum since 30 Dec 2025.
Team
Zama, a Paris-based cryptography company founded in late 2019 by Rand Hindi (CEO) and Pascal Paillier. Raised a $57M Series B in Jun 2025 (Pantera, Blockchange), over $150M in total at a valuation above $1B.
Technology
FHE runs off-chain on coprocessors, a threshold-MPC key service controls decryption, and a gateway handles proofs and bridging. ERC-7984 (with OpenZeppelin) is its confidential-token standard with optional compliance modules.
Traction
First confidential USDC vault on Morpho reached $40M in seven weeks (Jun 2026); 16 vaults and Zama Swap opened 15 Sep. cUSDT: $131M cumulative shielded volume, $7.7M TVL (mid-Sep). Dfns brings it to 400+ enterprise clients.
Competitors
Other FHE projects (Fhenix, Inco), ZK privacy systems (Aztec, Railgun), privacy chains such as Canton for institutions, and simply keeping trades off-chain.
Key risks
FHE is still slow and costly next to plain transactions; operator set is small (18 at launch); usage is young and partly incentive-driven; most supply is with team, investors and treasury.
Roadmap
Stated 2026 plan: more EVM chains in H1 and a Solana expansion in H2 (the token itself bridged to Solana on 24 Sep; confidential apps there not yet confirmed). Target of thousands of confidential transfers per second. Larger unlocks begin Feb 2027.
Token performance
1-year return (2 Feb 2026 → 21 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
ZAMA
+142%
BTC
-22%
ETH
-35%
ZAMA has traded for under nine months, so its figure covers 2 Feb to 21 Oct 2026 ($0.0344 → $0.083) while BTC and ETH are 12-month returns. No 3-year return exists for ZAMA; for reference, BTC is ~+179% (from ~$29.7k) and ETH ~+53% (from ~$1.6k) over 3 years (manual figures).
Range 2026
$0.0181 low (13 Feb) to $0.1015 high (23 Sep), daily closes; now $0.083 (ATH $0.107 intraday)
12-month drawdown
−49% right after listing, $0.0354 (3 Feb) to $0.0181 (13 Feb); −33% from the Sep peak to $0.0676 (15 Oct)
Liquidity
$16.5M traded in 24h, 7.8% of market cap; rank #182
Relative strength
+142% since listing vs BTC −22% and ETH −35% over a year; rallies followed product news (Jul, Sep)
ATH check ATH check passed. The $0.107 high (23 Sep 2026) came about eight months after the 2 Feb listing, not in the first 90 days, and price trades within 25% of it, so it is used as the reference.
Tokenomics
Supply
11B ZAMA at genesis; 11.33B total now and no hard cap. ~2.55B circulating (~22%), so FDV ($943M) is 4.4 times market cap.
Inflation
Staking rewards are newly minted at ~5% of supply a year (governance can change it), split 60% to key-management and 40% to coprocessor operators.
Unlocks
60-month schedule, Feb 2026 to Feb 2031: ~114.6M ZAMA (1%) a month, with the largest release on 2 Feb 2027. Allocation: team 20%, VCs 20%, treasury 20%, public sale 12%, angels 10%, growth 10%, campaigns 6%, liquidity 2%.
Utility
Pays protocol fees (input proofs, decryption, bridging), staked by operators and delegators, used for governance. Confidential transfers themselves move cUSDT or cUSDC, not ZAMA.
Concentration
Team, VCs and angels hold 50% of supply; the public sale (sealed-bid auction, ~$118M raised) was 12%.
Sinks
All fees are burned, but no burn total is published. ~63% of circulating supply is staked (Q2 report). One-off burn of 29.2M unsold community-sale tokens.
Bull case
Confidential vaults, cUSDT and private swaps grow from tens of millions to billions as institutions want on-chain privacy with compliance, and published fee burn starts to offset the ~5% mint. Price holds the $0.068 October low and retakes the $0.10 September peak.
Bear case
Usage stays incentive-driven while monthly unlocks of ~115M ZAMA and the Feb 2027 tranche add supply into a $212M market cap. Price loses $0.068 and slides back toward the $0.05 level of August.
Watch before the next re-run
First published fee-burn figures and the Q3 Shielded report
Size and market reaction to the 2 Feb 2027 unlock
Confidential vault TVL and cUSDT volume beyond incentives
$0.068 support (15 Oct close) and the $0.10 September high
Pool size (TVL), fee tier and fee APR are not in yet: they need DefiLlama, which this setup cannot reach so far. CL = concentrated liquidity (higher fees, more impermanent-loss risk).
On-chain share of all ZAMA volume: 11.3%.
As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.
