What is COTI (COTI)?

By CMC AI
30 January 2026 08:37AM (UTC+0)

TLDR

COTI is an Ethereum-based infrastructure layer that provides fast, programmable privacy for blockchain applications using a novel cryptographic technique.

  1. Privacy Infrastructure: It acts as a confidentiality layer, enabling private smart contracts and transactions while allowing for regulatory compliance.

  2. Garbled Circuits Tech: Its core innovation is a cryptographic protocol that processes encrypted data, making it faster and lighter than alternatives like ZK-proofs.

  3. Broad Ecosystem Use: The network supports confidential DeFi, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, AI agents, and private payments.

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

COTI solves the critical problem of data exposure on public blockchains. Transparent ledgers reveal sensitive information like trading positions and transaction history, which is a barrier for institutional and enterprise adoption. COTI’s value proposition is providing “programmable privacy”—a compliant infrastructure where data is encrypted by default, but selective disclosure is possible for audits or regulations (CoinMarketCap). This balance aims to unlock advanced use cases like private stablecoins and institutional settlement.

2. Technology & Architecture

The network is an Ethereum Layer 2 secured by Ethereum. Its breakthrough is using Garbled Circuits (GC), a cryptographic model that allows multiple parties to compute a function without revealing their private inputs. COTI claims this method is 3,000 times faster and 250 times lighter than zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), enabling high-throughput, low-cost private computation (U.Today). Its architecture is EVM-compatible, allowing developers to build and port applications easily.

3. Ecosystem & Key Differentiators

COTI’s ecosystem targets high-value sectors. It powers applications like PriveX, a private perpetual DEX, and partners with entities like the European Central Bank for CBDC research. A key differentiator is its “Privacy-on-Demand” model, which lets other blockchains use COTI’s privacy stack without migrating assets. This multichain approach, combined with a focus on compliance, sets it apart from earlier privacy-focused coins that offered only transactional anonymity.

Conclusion

Fundamentally, COTI is evolving from a payment network into the foundational privacy infrastructure for Web3, aiming to make confidential computation scalable and compliant. How will its focus on institutional-grade privacy shape the adoption of tokenized real-world assets?

CMC AI can make mistakes. Not financial advice.