Upbit accelerates privacy technology adoption through the listing of Aztec... Focus on Zama's FHE technology potential

Exilist’s research report indicates that on February 20, 2026, Upbit decided to list the privacy infrastructure project Aztec in the Korean won market. This move is of significant importance for the adoption of privacy technology in South Korea. Despite regulatory risks and exchange review standards, Upbit also opened trading pairs for Aztec’s BTC and USDT. This reflects that privacy technology is becoming an important application layer on the Ethereum platform. Exilist explains that this development has important commercial significance.

Meanwhile, the technologically advanced fully homomorphic encryption company Zama has also attracted attention. Zama conducted a token generation event in February 2026, but the initial market response did not meet expectations. Although it received over $10 billion in enterprise valuation in the private market, its fully diluted valuation at the time of listing was only around $200 million, and market evaluations have cooled. Behind this assessment, part of the reason is that early investors like Multicoin Capital expected a “cryptographic Holy Grail” narrative, which for ordinary investors still appears as an expensive toy.

Despite such market evaluations, discussions about Zama’s technological potential remain active. Exilist comments that Zama mentioned the unlimited potential of FHE in artificial intelligence and robotics markets as a data security mathematical tool, and is actively exploring its possibility as a long-term infrastructure. Zama aims to overcome infrastructure limitations through technological breakthroughs and has proposed a three-phase roadmap covering algorithm optimization, hardware acceleration, and hybrid architectures.

Despite these technological prospects, the future of Zama and FHE seems to depend on how well speed and resource issues can be addressed. Whether they can overcome market economic logic remains uncertain, but Zama’s technological vision is undoubtedly very powerful. If demand grows in industries requiring fully data-secure solutions based on FHE, Zama’s strategic position is expected to be further strengthened. Exilist’s research report concludes that there is a possibility for this vision to become a reality.