Privacy on Solana is accelerating. In the past six months, Umbra raised $155M, Arcium secured $11M, and projects like Vanish and encrypt.trade have launched with backing from Solana Ventures. 

Now the Solana Foundation is going further - launching Privacy Hack, a global hackathon with $140,000+ in prizes, and releasing Contra, a private execution infrastructure built directly into the protocol.

Here at Range, we are proud to sponsor a bounty focused on compliant privacy - an area where we've been working closely with Solana's leading privacy protocols.

Privacy in crypto is accelerating

Privacy has moved from a niche concern to a core requirement for blockchain infrastructure. As institutional capital enters the space and real-world payment flows move onchain, the limitations of fully transparent ledgers become clear.

Public blockchains expose wallet balances, transaction histories and counterparty relationships to anyone watching. For individuals, this means financial surveillance. For businesses, it means leakage of competitive intelligence. For DAOs and treasuries, it means telegraphing every move to the market.

Solana has emerged as a focal point for privacy innovation. Projects like Umbra, Vanish, Encrypt Trade, Turbine Cash and Arcium are building confidential transfer systems, shielded pools and zero-knowledge infrastructure directly on Solana's high-performance network. The Privacy Hack reflects this momentum - over $140,000 in prizes across 17 bounties, with sponsors including Arcium, Aztec, Helius, MagicBlock and Range.

The Solana Foundation is also building privacy into its core infrastructure. Contra, announced alongside the Privacy Hack, provides private execution infrastructure for Solana. It eliminates public mempool exposure, prevents front-running and lets applications set their own access controls, rate limits and compliance requirements - all while settling in 100ms batches against mainnet liquidity. Contra signals that privacy is now a first-class concern at the protocol level, with the Foundation investing in infrastructure that supports both confidentiality and compliance.

Why compliance matters for privacy

Privacy protocols face a fundamental tension. Without safeguards, private systems can become safe havens for illicit activity - money laundering, sanctions evasion and stolen funds. This creates regulatory risk for the protocols themselves and for users who unknowingly interact with tainted addresses.

The solution is compliant privacy: systems that provide confidentiality for legitimate users while screening out bad actors and maintaining auditability when legally required.

Range provides the screening layer that enables this. Our Risk API and Onchain Risk Verifier enable privacy protocols to check wallets against OFAC sanctions lists, global blacklists and real-time risk heuristics - before a user deposits or withdraws. If a flagged address attempts to interact with a privacy pool, the transaction reverts at the smart contract level.

This approach preserves privacy for legitimate users while preventing protocols from becoming conduits for illicit funds.

Solana privacy apps using Range

Several Solana privacy projects have integrated Range's infrastructure:

Umbra uses Range as its intelligence partner for proactive deposit screening. When a user initiates a deposit into Umbra's privacy pool, a Switchboard oracle queries Range's real-time risk feed. If the address is flagged, the smart contract reverts the transaction. This check is hardcoded into the program logic and cannot be bypassed.

Vanish, Turbine Cash, and other emerging privacy protocols on Solana are being built with compliance-first architectures, many of which leverage Range's Risk API for wallet screening and transaction simulation.

Our Solana Transaction Security Standard, developed with Squads, protects programs, accounts and treasuries worth over $30 billion. The same infrastructure powers compliance for privacy-focused applications.

How Range preserves privacy

Range's approach to compliance is designed to preserve user privacy rather than compromise it.

When a privacy protocol queries Range, we return a binary risk signal - flagged or not flagged. We don't require user identity, KYC data or transaction history. The protocol learns only whether a specific address is associated with sanctioned entities or known illicit activity.

For users who need to demonstrate compliance (for tax reporting, institutional requirements or legal purposes), privacy protocols can implement selective disclosure using viewing keys. Range's infrastructure supports this model - compliance when required, privacy by default.

This is the principle behind our Onchain Risk Verifier: real-time, privacy-preserving risk checks that execute entirely onchain.

Solana’s Privacy Hack by the numbers

The Solana Privacy Hack includes $140,500+ in total prizes across 17 bounties:

Main Tracks (judged by Solana Foundation): $48,000 across private payments, privacy tooling and an open track supported by Light Protocol.

Sponsor Bounties: $92,500+ from ecosystem partners including Privacy Cash ($15k), Radr Labs ($15k), Anoncoin ($10k), Arcium ($10k), Aztec ($10k), Inco ($6k), Helius ($5k), MagicBlock ($5k), SilentSwap ($5k), Starpay ($3.5k), Quicknode ($3k), PNP Exchange ($2.5k), Range ($1.5k+) and Encrypt.trade ($1k).

All participating teams in the Range bounty also receive free API credits for two months.

The Range bounty: What to build

Range's bounty is focused on compliant privacy - private and confidential applications that integrate screening, selective disclosure or risk verification.

Here are some ideas for what you could build:

• Pre-deposit screening flows: Integrate Range's Risk API to check depositor addresses before funds enter a privacy pool. Show users a clear UX when a deposit is blocked and why.

• Selective disclosure interfaces: Build tools that let users generate compliance proofs from their private transaction history - for tax filings, institutional onboarding or audit requests - without revealing unrelated activity.

• Risk-aware routing: Create a transaction router that checks recipient addresses against Range's risk feed before executing private transfers, warning users if they're about to send funds to a flagged wallet.

• Compliance dashboards for privacy protocols: Build analytics and monitoring tools that help privacy protocol teams track screening activity, blocked addresses and compliance metrics.

• Attestation integrations: Use the new Solana Attestation Service, in conjunction with Range's risk data, to issue onchain compliance credentials for privacy pool participants.

We're looking for projects that demonstrate how privacy and compliance can coexist - not as a compromise, but as complementary features that make privacy infrastructure sustainable and trustworthy.

Privacy is important. So is staying compliant.

Range is excited to see the Solana Foundation investing in privacy infrastructure - both through Privacy Hack and through core protocol additions like Contra. Privacy is a fundamental right: the ability to transact without exposing your entire financial life to the world. But privacy without accountability creates systemic risks that ultimately harm the ecosystem.

The projects emerging from Privacy Hack, combined with infrastructure like Contra, will shape how Solana handles confidential transactions, shielded balances and private DeFi. Range is committed to providing the compliance layer that makes this infrastructure viable for the long term.

If you're building at Privacy Hack, check out our documentation and watch our workshop for a deep dive on onchain risk management. If your app is already live, get in touch to integrate Range's Risk API into your privacy project.

Build private. Stay compliant. Win prizes.