TLDR
- Dash leads the sector with an average of 48.5 daily development events on GitHub over the past month.
- There is a clear divergence between stagnant prices and steady technological advancement in protocols like Monero.
- Team focus has shifted toward metadata protection infrastructure and network resilience.
Despite regulatory pressure and poor performance on candlestick charts, developer activity in privacy coins shows a notable acceleration beneath the market surface. Data from Santiment reveals that this sector is prioritizing code construction over immediate financial speculation.
๐งโ๐ป Here are crypto's top 10 privacy coin projects by development. Directional indicators represent each project's ranking positioning since last update:
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 23, 2026
โก๏ธ 1) @dashpay $DASH ๐ฅ
โก๏ธ 2) @nym $NYM ๐ฅ
โก๏ธ 3) @hoprnet $HOPR ๐ฅ
๐ 4) @monero $XMR
โก๏ธ 5) @decredproject $DCR
๐ 6) @firoorgโฆ pic.twitter.com/MTS2o6m2QL
This phenomenon is evidenced by a GitHub event metric that filters out low-quality contributions to focus on meaningful progress. As a result, projects like Dash (DASH) lead the list by a wide margin, followed closely by infrastructures like Nym (NYM) and HOPR, which are strengthening their technological foundations.
Consequently, the resilience of established networks like Monero (XMR) and Decred (DCR) suggests that teams are “building through weakness.” This behavior is generally an indicator of long-term survivability, as it moves away from fleeting narratives to focus on real-world utility.

Disconnection Between Market Value and Technical Progress
What stands out most in this report is the total disconnect between development strength and market performance. While several of the top-positioned projects show negative returns, engineering efforts remain concentrated, indicating a bet on future structural relevance.
This pattern suggests that, in the face of increasing global financial surveillance, developers are positioning themselves early. In this sense, they are reinforcing anonymity tools and privacy guarantees before mass demand visibly returns to the ecosystem.
In summary, developer activity in privacy coins acts as a silent but powerful signal for investors. While the sector is not driven by media hype at the moment, projects investing today in technical development are expected to be the primary beneficiaries when capital eventually rotates back toward privacy.




