> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.inkwell.finance/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# How Dagon compares
> Every crypto dark pool / private-trading venue versus Dagon — privacy tech, what's actually encrypted, operator visibility, price discovery, and status.
> **CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY © 2026 Inkwell Finance, Inc. All Rights Reserved.**
>
> This document is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or investment advice, nor an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security or other financial instrument. Any examples, structures, or flows described here are design intent only and may change.
Plenty of venues call themselves private. Almost all of them encrypt the
order, the balance, or nothing at all. **Only Dagon encrypts the match
itself** — the order, the price discovery, and the crossing — with the
operator holding no key by design.
This page maps the field on five axes that hold regardless of asset class.
Every cell was checked against primary sources (project docs, whitepapers,
audits, reputable press) as of **June 2026**.
Several venues here publish **no whitepaper or third-party audit** — GoDark,
Confidex and Darklake among them. Their "hidden / private" properties are
**vendor claims**, marked as such below. Dagon's own production privacy is
**not live**: today's devnet runs a mock executor with plaintext ingress
([why](/dagon/faq/why-fhe-not-zk)). The matrix describes Dagon's design;
production privacy activates on the Encrypt threshold network.
## The matrix
| Venue | Privacy tech | What's encrypted | Operator can read your order? | Price set privately? | Status |
| --------------- | ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- |
| **Dagon** | FHE | **The match itself** (order, price, crossing) | No — by design | **Yes** — found while encrypted | Devnet; Encrypt mainnet next |
| Renegade | MPC + ZK | Orders, sizes, balances (off-chain) | Partly — its relayer can; none if self-hosted | No — pegged to Binance midpoint | Live (Arbitrum 2024; Base later) |
| Penumbra | ZK (Groth16) | Order amount, direction, identity | No — sees only the net flow | Partly — net flow & clearing price public | Mainnet 2024; low volume; Labs winding down |
| Confidex | MPC (Arcium); ZK for compliance | Size, entry, liquidation, PnL — not collateral, side, leverage or market | Partly — those fields are public | Partly — entry hidden; mark is a public Pyth oracle | Devnet (hackathon, unaudited) |
| Darklake | ZK (Groth16) + Arcium MPC | Slippage, size, price limits — pre-trade only | Partly — hidden pre-trade, revealed after | No — an AMM; pool price is public | Live AMM; acquired by SOL Strategies 2026 |
| Arcium + Umbra | MPC compute (MXE) + ZK | Balances, transfers, swap intent — not the match | No — encrypted compute | n/a — a wallet, not a matching venue | Live — mainnet alpha Feb 2026 |
| GoDark | ZK + off-chain nodes | Order details, from its nodes (claimed) | **Claims no** — unaudited, no whitepaper | No — order book + lit-venue pricing | Live institutional; Solana DEX early access |
| Enclave Markets | TEE (Intel SGX) | The order (inside the enclave) | No\* — trust the SGX hardware, not cryptography | No — mid-match vs an oracle midpoint | **Paused** (withdrawals only) |
| SFOX | None (hidden book) | Nothing — the operator runs it | Yes | No — routes to external venues | Live since 2020 |
| HumidiFi | None | Nothing — "dark" by UX only; trades are public | Yes — the operator is the market maker | No | Live — top Solana DEX by volume |
**How to read "Operator can read your order?"** — *No* means the venue
operator cannot read your order even if fully malicious (a cryptographic
guarantee). *No\** means it relies on trusting hardware (a TEE). *Claims no*
means asserted but unaudited. *Partly* means some fields leak or some
operating modes expose the order. *Yes* means a trusted operator sees it.
## By venue
**Renegade** — On-chain crossing network (SPDZ MPC + collaborative Bulletproofs).
Your delegated relayer reads your order in plaintext; self-hosting avoids that.
Fills peg to the Binance midpoint (off-chain price reporter, not an on-chain
oracle). Live on Arbitrum since Sept 2024, later Base; no disclosed volume.
**Penumbra** — Shielded Cosmos app-chain with a sealed-bid batch DEX (ZSwap,
Groth16). Validators decrypt only the *aggregate net flow* per block, so
individual orders stay hidden — but the clearing price and net flow are public.
Mainnet since 2024; Penumbra Labs is winding down (community-maintained).
**Confidex** — Confidential Solana DEX (spot + perps) built on Arcium MPC; ZK is
used only for an optional compliance proof. Encrypts position economics but
leaves side, leverage, market, **collateral**, and wallet public, and prices off
a public Pyth oracle. Devnet hackathon build, unaudited.
**Darklake** — Anti-MEV "zkAMM" (Groth16, branded Zyga; Arcium MPC for post-trade
state). Hides slippage/size/limits only during the commit window, revealed after
settlement. It's an AMM, so the pool price is public. Acquired by SOL Strategies
(April 2026); perps are POC-only; no TVL data.
**Arcium + Umbra** — Arcium is confidential-compute *infrastructure* (MXE: MPC +
FHE + ZK); Umbra is the privacy *wallet* on it (shielded transfers + encrypted
swaps). Encrypts balances and intent, not a match — it has no matching engine or
private price discovery. Mainnet alpha since Feb 2026. (Note: the widely-cited
"\$155M" is an October 2025 ICO raise, **not** TVL.)
**GoDark** — Two products: an institutional off-chain dark pool (live, Oct 2025,
backed by Copper + GSR) and an announced Solana ZK DEX (early access). Both
*claim* ZK matching where even their nodes can't see orders — but there is no
whitepaper or audit to verify it, and price discovery runs off an order book with
lit-venue best-price checks.
**Enclave Markets** — TEE-based encrypted exchange (Intel SGX + remote
attestation). Privacy is a hardware-trust model, not cryptographic; price is a
mid-match against an external oracle midpoint. **Currently paused** (withdrawals
only) as of June 2026.
**SFOX** — Institutional prime broker with a centralized, trusted-operator hidden
book. No cryptographic privacy: hidden from other traders, not from SFOX. Routes
across external venues for best price. KYC'd, FinCEN-registered. Live since 2020.
**HumidiFi** — Solana's volume-leading "dark AMM." "Dark" by branding only: it's a
single-LP proprietary prop AMM with off-chain quoting and **fully public on-chain
trades** — the operator is the market maker and sees all flow. Zero cryptographic
privacy; included as the category's contrast case.
## What's excluded, and why
* **Privacy layers** (Railgun, Hinkal, Panther) shield transactions and route into
public DEXs — they have no matching engine of their own, so they are not dark
pools.
* **No TVL column** — figures across this category are unreliable and frequently
conflated with token raises. Omitted rather than misstated.
## The one-line thesis
Everyone else encrypts *something* — the order, the balance, or nothing. Dagon
encrypts the matching *mechanism* itself, and is the only venue where price
discovery is confidential while the venue remains auditable via
[selective disclosure](/dagon/concepts/selective-disclosure). That is a
construction that does not exist elsewhere — a moat in the mechanism, not the
calendar.