Axelar FDN Advances Onchain Privacy, Joining Zypherpunk Hackathon as Sponsor
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Axelar Foundation is proudly sponsoring the Zypherpunk Hackathon, a global build event focused on advancing onchain privacy, bringing together projects in finance and beyond.
As institutional capital moves onchain, confidentiality becomes a foundational requirement, not a nice-to-have. Private deal-flow, hidden strategy and restricted counterparties are hallmarks of institutional finance, and the public-chain ecosystem must evolve accordingly.
As the Gateway to Onchain Finance, Axelar is the connector supporting developers of privacy technologies that will facilitate the onchain onboarding and growth of institutional DeFi.
“Institutions won’t adopt onchain finance without privacy, but privacy alone isn’t enough. These systems need access to the users, liquidity and innovation that are growing on public blockchains, and the ability to connect the applications people actually use," said Sergey Gorbunov, CEO of Interop Labs and co-founder of Axelar Network. "Composability in onchain finance means privacy-preserving execution environments connect securely to the rest of the ecosystem, so developers don’t have to choose between confidentiality and liquidity.”
Privacy tech in action: Axelar and Deutsche Bank
Privacy-enabled interoperability is already moving into real-world deployment. Axelar Network is proud to support the multi-chain pilot initiative DAMA 2, led by Deutsche Bank in collaboration with Memento Blockchain. The DAMA 2 project is part of this year's Project Guardian white paper rollout from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In that work, Axelar anchors a privacy-enabled Layer 2 to the Ethereum blockchain for final settlement, and to dozens of other blockchains for access to onchain opportunities in trading and yield. .
Axelar’s role in the Zypherpunk hackathon
Axelar is offering $20K worth of AXL bounties in total, split across two tracks.
- Cross-Chain Privacy Solutions (building bridges across blockchains while preserving user privacy).
- Privacy-Preserving AI & Computation (deploying private compute, inference or training while safeguarding data).
Axelar Foundation is more than a sponsor: Sergey Gorbunov will join a panel of judges that includes Cobie, Anatoly Yakovenko, Balaji Srinivasan, Eli Ben-Sasson, Zooko Wilcox, Eli Ben-Sasson, Zooko Wilcox, Sean Bowe, Imran Khan, Mert Mumtaz, Illia Polosukhin and Eddy Lazzarin to review submissions, hone the criteria and help identify the next generation of privacy-preserving onchain solutions. We’re looking for innovators who:
- Build cross-chain privacy bridges using zero-knowledge protocols, MPC or other confidentiality tech.
- Enable private compute or AI pipelines that tap into onchain data or settlement.
- Deliver practical, institution-ready systems that interoperate across many chains while preserving confidentiality.
Join us for the hackathon
If you’re passionate about privacy, interoperability and building infrastructure with institutional potential, we invite you to register for the Zypherpunk Hackathon now. Build a protocol, a tool or an AI pipeline that spans multiple chains while keeping user data confidential. Axelar Network will be there to support you through mentorship, judging and the AXL bounty.
Let’s build the future of onchain finance, together.
