The XRP Ledger (XRPL) used by blockchain payments company Ripple has tapped Boundless, a zero-knowledge infrastructure provider, to let banks and asset managers execute confidential yet compliant transactions directly on the network, according to a Tuesday release shared with Cointelegraph.

Boundless chief executive Shiv Shankar told Cointelegraph the design aims to shield details like transaction size, frequency and counterparties from public view, while still allowing regulators to audit activity via selective disclosure and role-based access controls.

Boundless’ integration is meant to enable a range of institutional use cases that have historically been challenging to run on fully transparent ledgers. Those include cross-border business-to-business payments, treasury and capital management, over-the-counter positions, tokenized asset issuance and decentralized exchange or lending activity, where order flow and positions are highly sensitive, according to Shankar.

For public blockchains, that trade-off between transparency and confidentiality has become a central barrier to institutional adoption, as banks and asset managers seek to protect trading strategies and client activity without falling out of step with regulatory oversight. 

The move positions XRPL in an increasingly competitive race to deliver bank-grade privacy on public blockchains, as institutions push to avoid what Shankar described as the “transparency tax” of fully visible onchain activity.

Privacy race expands across ZK and FHE approaches

In March, cryptography company Zama integrated its fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) stack with institutional tokenization platform T-REX, pitching its technology as a confidentiality layer for ERC-3643 securities (tokenized financial instruments that embed compliance rules into the token standard) on upcoming T-REX public networks.

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Other projects are betting on different flavors of zero-knowledge technology, including zkSync’s Prividium environment, which aims to anchor private institutional execution to Ethereum via ZK proofs while keeping raw transaction data off public view.

Shankar said that projects like zkSync require institutions to launch their own layer-2s, which involves greater investment and overhead. In contrast, Boundless deploys solutions via smart contracts, which he said allows institutions to “stay where the liquidity is” (on Ethereum), and “gain more flexibility on where they deploy their products.”

Shankar said the design aims to replicate the selective disclosure controls of traditional finance in an onchain environment, rather than forcing institutions to choose between privacy and compliance.

Privacy shifts from feature to core infrastructure

The rollout highlights how privacy is becoming a feature of base-layer and tokenization infrastructure rather than an optional add-on.

The tokenized asset market reached $29.25 billion in April 2026, up 7.9% in a month, according to data from RWA.xyz.

As more real-world assets migrate onchain and traditional players experiment with tokenized funds, deposits and securities, pressure is mounting on networks to accommodate both institutional secrecy and supervisory oversight.

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