What is COTI (COTI)?

By CMC AI
02 September 2026 08:41AM (UTC+0)
TLDR

COTI is an Ethereum-based Layer 2 infrastructure that provides a programmable privacy layer for Web3, enabling confidential transactions and smart contracts.

  1. Privacy Infrastructure – It serves as a foundational privacy layer, allowing applications and institutions to conduct compliant, private transactions on public blockchains.

  2. Advanced Cryptography – Its core technology uses Garbled Circuits, a cryptographic method that processes encrypted data much faster than traditional privacy protocols.

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

COTI addresses the critical need for compliant privacy in blockchain. While public ledgers offer transparency, they expose sensitive financial data. COTI’s infrastructure enables programmable privacy, meaning users and institutions can keep transaction details, wallet balances, and smart contract logic confidential while still allowing for necessary audits and disclosures. This targets key use cases like private stablecoins, confidential DeFi, and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), aiming to meet enterprise and institutional demand for secure, scalable blockchain integration.

2. Technology & Architecture

Originally a payments-focused network using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG), COTI has evolved into an EVM-compatible Ethereum Layer 2. Its breakthrough is the implementation of Garbled Circuits (GC), a form of secure multi-party computation. This allows the network to perform computations on encrypted data without decrypting it first, which the project claims is up to 3,000 times faster than zero-knowledge proofs. Transactions are processed off-chain for speed and privacy, with final settlement secured on Ethereum. This architecture supports the creation of private ERC-20 tokens and seamless user interaction through tools like the COTI Privacy Portal.

Conclusion

COTI has fundamentally transformed from a payment rail into a specialized privacy infrastructure, betting that programmable, audit-ready confidentiality is essential for next-generation blockchain adoption. Will its speed and compliance focus be the key to unlocking institutional use cases at scale?

CMC AI can make mistakes. Not financial advice.