Railgun launches ‘plug-and-play’ privacy DeFi layer for Ethereum

Railgun [RAIL] has hit a key milestone that could scale privacy for DeFi like never before. The privacy mania has been so loud on token price gains, but the underlying protocols haven’t been very useful or scalable until now. 

From Zcash to Tornado Cash, users could only deposit funds and shield them (hide) from the public or explorers. You can only park the funds there with limited utility. 

However, to swap into a DeFi or use a lending protocol, one had to unshield and move the funds, making it easy to correlate and track the activity – A zero usability apart from hiding balances that limits legacy privacy protocols. 

Now, the Ethereum [ETH]-based project has successfully tested Railgun_connect on CowSwap, effectively allowing private wallets to use DeFi platforms without unshielding and moving funds. 

The project said, 

“RAILGUN_connect is a first-of-its-kind tool for privacy and is a huge leap in making private addresses as functional as public ones.”

The team billed the feature as a ‘universal plug-and-play’ that will ‘eliminate the heavy work needed to build an integration to use a DeFi application from a private balance.’

Railgun leverages zero-knowledge proofs for shielded transfers, so interactions with DeFi frontends don’t compromise decentralization or privacy. 

Railgun traction hits record high

The push for DeFi privacy at scale aligns with Ethereum’s vision and increasing appetite for such solutions. 

In fact, the number of shields per day for tracking private wallets has been rising sharply since 2025. In early 2026, the daily average shield hit a record high of 326, further confirming the massive demand for privacy.

Additionally, the cumulative volume on the privacy protocol reached a record $4.5 billion, up from $2.4 billion a year ago. This translated into nearly 100% growth, or 2x, on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. 

The native governance token, RAIL, didn’t fall behind amid this growing network traction. In fact, after the pullback earlier in the week, the token recovered 25%.

This was part of a broader privacy coins rally after the E.U.-U.S. tensions eased, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff pause in favor of a potential Greenland deal. 

Final Thoughts 

• Railgun unveiled Raingun_connect, a ‘plug and play’ feature to scale DeFi privacy 
• The privacy project has seen a record daily shield of 326 amid rising demand for privacy solutions.