Sui Plans Private Transactions For 2026, Mysten Labs Co-Founder Confirms

Mysten Labs co-founder and chief product officer Adeniyi Abiodun said Sui will add “private transactions” in 2026, framing privacy as a prerequisite for scaling on-chain payments to mainstream users while still staying inside regulatory guardrails.

In a post on X, Abiodun wrote: “Private transactions are coming to Sui Network in 2026. More on this soon!!” Sui’s official account amplified the tease in a reply, writing: “Private transactions on Sui. 2026 is going to be exciting no doubt.”

Private Transactions Are Coming To SUI In 2026

In a short accompanying video, Abiodun argued that payments adoption and transparent-by-default ledgers are a poor fit at consumer scale. “It’s impossible to get mass global consumer adoption for anything payments related without privacy,” he said, adding that Mysten had already spent time building privacy components before Sui’s mainnet launch. But the team held back earlier due to “sensitivities around privacy” and uncertainty about what would be “commercially viable for businesses to use.”

Abiodun’s more notable claim was that privacy would not be an optional feature bolted onto apps. “You’re going to see in 2026 private payments directly on Sui, so users don’t even have to opt in to ensure that their transactions they do on-chain are inherently private,” he said. “So we’re going to be a world leader in this space. We’re going to make it possible for users to transact on the internet as freely as possible with as much privacy as possible, also while adhering to what the regulatory constraints may be as well.”

Abiodun described the planned functionality as “first class primitives” embedded at the protocol level, positioning it as infrastructure other teams can build on rather than a single product. “It’s going to be a protocol primitive, so everybody can use it,” he said. “It’s not going to be something that’s very bespoke and ultimately be available in Slush, should be available in other wallets in the Sui ecosystem, but we’re taking privacy very seriously.”

He also sketched out a user-controlled disclosure model, where on-chain activity is private by default but selectively shareable. “We believe users deserve to have the transactions they do on-chain private. They should be able to expose that information to whoever needs to see it, but ultimately only them and the receiver should be able to decide for that information,” Abiodun said, describing a system where transaction visibility is not dictated by the base layer’s default transparency.

While Abiodun did not specify the cryptographic approach or implementation details, he repeatedly emphasized enterprise usage alongside consumer payments, suggesting the design target is broader than typical “privacy coin” positioning.

“More importantly, we’re looking at making privacy something that can be used by large enterprises on Sui as well,” he said. “Their requirements differ somewhat and we’re taking this very seriously and we’re going to build some amazing tools and technologies that take advantage of that, but also makes it possible for organizations to build amazing privacy-based applications on-chain using the tools afforded to them by the Sui stack.”

SUI Price: Rally Or Dead?

The announcement landed into an already split market narrative around SUI. Dutch based crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe argued that Sui’s ecosystem metrics are outrunning price, calling it “one of the strongest ecosystems in crypto” and pointing to the fundamental growth.

“The disconnect between the price and the fundamental valuation [is] enormous. TVL is around $1B, more and more apps will be deployed, Walrus is constantly growing within the SUI ecosystem. Robinhood has also listed SUI earlier this month + Coinbase users in NY are able to buy the asset. The moment that the markets are turning back upwards, capital should flow back to the ones that have been performing. In that sense, SUI is a strong one,” he stated.

Others are more dismissive. In a Dec. 30 post, crypto analyst Nebraskangooner (@Nebraskangooner) stated: “Heavy resistance overhead. Likely another dying altcoin.”

At press time, SUI traded at $1.44.