Imagine you have a bunch of locked boxes containing important data. You
don't want to open the boxes for others to see, but you want someone to be able to directly process this data in the locked
state and return a useful result to you. Fully Homomorphic
Encryption (FHE) is like a 'magic key'. It allows direct computation on encrypted
data, including addition, multiplication, and even more complex operations. And
it doesn't require decryption at all. This technology sounds like something out of science fiction,
but @zama_fhe is making it a reality.

Public chains require complete transparency of transaction data, but finance, identity, and
governance scenarios cannot do without privacy protection. Zama was founded in 2020 by @randhindi and
@pascal_paillier with the goal of extending 'end-to-end encryption' to on-chain applications. Since its founding in 2020, Zama has
already completed several rounds of financing, easily exceeding 100 million in total. In March 2024, they
closed a $73 million Series A round, led by
@multicoincap and @protocollabs. Solana's
@yakovenko_found and Ethereum's @gavofyork, such industry
heavyweights, co-invested. By June 2025, a $57 million Series B round raised the
valuation directly to $1 billion, with Blockchange Ventures and
@PanteraCapital leading the support.


In Crypto, Zama's FHEVM can make smart contracts 'invisible'.
For example, if you borrow money in DeFi, with FHEVM, no
one knows how much you borrowed, and no one knows who you are, but the transaction can still be
completed. This is especially useful for big players! Imagine an institution wanting to buy a large
amount of tokens on-chain, but doesn't want the market to catch wind of it beforehand, FHE can help them quietly
get it done. NFT auctions can also use it, with bids kept secret, the process fair, and no
one can steal your strategy.

On the AI side, Zama's Concrete ML framework is even more valuable. Suppose several
hospitals want to collaborate on training a diagnostic model, but patient data cannot be disclosed. With
FHE, the data is encrypted throughout, and the model can still learn intelligently. This
technology allows sensitive industries like healthcare, finance, and even government to use AI with confidence,
without worrying about privacy being breached. More broadly, cloud storage, identity verification,
and even voting systems can all benefit from Zama's FHE. It's platform-agnostic,
as long as there is data to protect, it can come in handy.

Nothing is perfect, and Zama is no exception. The computational cost of FHE
is still a major issue, especially when it comes to complex tasks, the machine has to do everything
it can to run it. But Zama is already working hard, they are collaborating with hardware
companies to develop GPU acceleration, and even developing dedicated FHE chips,
intending to make up for the performance shortcomings. Another hurdle is that developers have to learn how to
use this thing. Zama is smart, they simply open-sourced the tools and created a
bounty program to encourage everyone to try it out and slowly build up the community~

Zama's slogan is 'HTTPZ', like HTTPS for the Web, FHE for
the chain. If dedicated chips, cross-chain privacy interoperability, and decentralized co-processing
are implemented according to the roadmap, on-chain users will for the first time have the experience of being 'as anonymous as a bank,
as trustworthy as Ethereum'. This is not only a privacy upgrade, but also
the second curve of the Crypto business model.

Privacy is not an accessory to Crypto, but a stepping stone to mainstream finance and large-scale
applications. Zama provides a radically different path from ZK, based on FHE.
When cryptographic primitives and business logic are truly
integrated, the on-chain world may usher in a second 'crypto migration'. For
developers and investors, now is the best window to seize the FHE dividend.