Taurus Unveils First Private Smart Contract for Stablecoins
Swiss firm launches a privacy-preserving stablecoin framework built on Aztec Network to meet compliance and institutional demand.
In a move poised to reshape the stablecoin landscape, Swiss digital asset infrastructure provider Taurus has introduced what it calls the first private smart contract for stablecoins, blending confidentiality, compliance, and auditability into a single offering. Backed by financial heavyweights including Deutsche Bank, State Street, and Credit Suisse, Taurus aims to address a core friction point in stablecoin adoption: the lack of transaction privacy on public blockchains.
A New Class of Privacy-First Stablecoins
Unlike conventional stablecoins—whose transaction histories are publicly viewable on-chain—Taurus’ smart contract offers private transfers, encrypted balances, and selective visibility for authorized parties such as issuers, regulators, and law enforcement. The contract leverages zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology, ensuring that financial institutions and their clients can transact discreetly while remaining fully compliant with regulatory oversight.
According to Taurus, this innovation prevents unauthorized entities from tracking wallet activity, reverse-engineering investment strategies, or targeting high-value users.
The contract is deployed on the Aztec Network, a zero-knowledge Layer 2 blockchain focused on privacy-preserving Ethereum-based applications. Arnaud Schenk, Executive Director at the Aztec Network board, emphasized the need for discretion in financial transactions:
“Practical adoption for payroll, intra-company transfers, or day-to-day payments simply can’t happen if every transaction remains visible to all and immutably inscribed on a widely available ledger,” Schenk stated.
By integrating with Aztec, Taurus allows institutions to maintain both data confidentiality and regulatory visibility, creating a middle ground between opaque off-chain finance and fully public decentralized systems.
Key Compliance and Control Features
Taurus’ smart contract retains the core functional traits of leading centralized stablecoins like USDC, including:
- Mint and burn control by a central authority
- Pause and unpause functions for freezing transfers
- Address blacklisting to enforce sanctions or respond to suspicious activity
- Event logging for verifiable audit trails
These capabilities enable issuers to intervene when necessary—whether for legal, security, or compliance reasons—while still maintaining a degree of transactional opacity for all other observers.
The firm argues that this feature set unlocks a range of institutional use cases, including treasury operations, payroll disbursements, and regulated digital payment applications, all of which demand higher privacy standards than current public-chain stablecoins can offer.
Strategic Context and Industry Momentum
The launch of Taurus’ private stablecoin contract builds on the company’s earlier rollout of a confidential security token standard in February 2025. That initiative provided a privacy-preserving framework for issuing tokenized debt and equity instruments on public blockchains, further demonstrating Taurus’ commitment to institutional-grade confidentiality solutions.
JP Aumasson, Chief Security Officer at Taurus, framed the new stablecoin model as a watershed moment:
“We showed that it’s possible to protect the privacy and security of stablecoin users while retaining the features of industry-standard stablecoins,” Aumasson said. “This addresses concerns that we’ve repeatedly heard from banks looking at issuing stablecoins, central banks, and regulators.”
The announcement also arrives against the backdrop of major regulatory movement in the United States. In mid-June, the Senate passed the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins), a sweeping legislative framework for the stablecoin sector.
The GENIUS Act includes provisions such as:
- Full USD backing for issued stablecoins
- Licensing tied to market capitalization thresholds
- Consumer protection clauses, giving users repayment priority during bankruptcies
- Stricter controls to combat money laundering and terror financing
On Wednesday, Senator Cynthia Lummis urged Congress to fast-track both the GENIUS Act and broader crypto market reforms. “I’m not saying combine them, but they both need to pass this year,” she stated, underscoring the urgency around stablecoin legislation.
Stablecoin Market Eyes $1 Trillion Milestone
As privacy concerns and regulatory frameworks evolve, demand for stablecoins continues to surge. Taurus highlighted that the total supply of stablecoins now exceeds $250 billion, marking a 1,200% increase since 2020. The firm projects this figure could swell to $1–2 trillion by 2030, fueled by growing adoption in both institutional and retail markets.
The intersection of privacy, compliance, and scalability is increasingly seen as the key to unlocking the next phase of stablecoin adoption. With the launch of its private smart contract, Taurus is positioning itself at the forefront of this transformation, offering a bridge between the discretion of traditional finance and the programmability of blockchain.
As the digital asset space matures, solutions like Taurus’ are likely to gain traction among risk-conscious institutions seeking secure, compliant, and private digital payment rails. Whether this model becomes the new industry standard remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the future of stablecoins is moving beyond transparency—and into the realm of controlled confidentiality.
