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1. Dash leads the latest privacy development ranking
Dash (DASH) has taken first place among privacy coins and privacy-focused crypto projects in a development activity ranking published by on-chain analytics firm Santiment on November 13. Chainlink (LINK) placed second and HOPR (HOPR) third, based on notable GitHub contributions recorded over the preceding 30 days.
The ranking is part of a recurring series in which Santiment measures how much meaningful engineering work is happening inside a defined group of projects. This edition covers the privacy sector, a category that has broadened considerably as privacy technology spreads from standalone coins into the infrastructure that supports the wider crypto ecosystem.
Beyond the top three, the list rounds out with Zama (ZAMA) in fourth, NYM (NYM) fifth, Zcash (ZEC) sixth, Monero (XMR) seventh, Dusk (DUSK) eighth, Aztec (AZTEC) ninth and Anyone (ANYONE) tenth.
2. Who moved up and who slipped
Compared with Santiment's previous privacy update, Dash and HOPR both climbed the table, while Chainlink edged down from the position it held last time. The shift handed the top spot to one of the oldest names in the privacy category.
Dash's return to first place stands out because the project has been around for more than a decade, long enough to have watched many newer privacy initiatives arrive with fresh funding and large developer teams. A sustained lift in its development output suggests its contributors remain actively engaged in maintaining and extending the codebase rather than leaving it in a steady state.
HOPR's move into third is a signal of a different kind. The project is focused on privacy at the networking layer rather than on private payments, so its rise points to growing engineering effort in infrastructure-style privacy tools. Chainlink's slight decline, meanwhile, is a small change for a project that has consistently placed near the top of these lists, and it does not by itself indicate a slowdown in its broader development.
3. What are privacy coins?
Privacy coins are cryptocurrencies designed to conceal some or all of the details of a transaction, such as the sender, the recipient or the amount transferred. On transparent networks like Bitcoin, every transaction is permanently visible on a public ledger, and while addresses are pseudonymous, analytics tools can often link them to real-world identities. Privacy coins use cryptographic techniques to make that kind of tracing far more difficult.
The best-known examples take different approaches. Monero applies privacy to every transaction by default, obscuring senders, receivers and amounts. Zcash gives users a choice between transparent and shielded transactions, with the shielded variety relying on zero-knowledge proofs to confirm a payment is valid without revealing its details. Dash began as a payments-focused coin and offers an optional mixing feature that combines transactions from multiple users to break the link between inputs and outputs.
All three of those established privacy coins appear in Santiment's latest top ten, a reminder that the original wave of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies still commands substantial developer attention years after launch.
4. Why Chainlink and other infrastructure projects make the list
The presence of Chainlink near the top of a privacy ranking may surprise readers who know it primarily as an oracle network, the service that feeds external data such as asset prices into smart contracts. Its inclusion reflects how Santiment defines the category: the watchlist covers not only classic privacy coins but also infrastructure projects that use privacy technology without being privacy coins in the traditional sense.
That broader definition explains why the table mixes very different kinds of projects. HOPR and NYM work on protecting metadata as information travels across networks, aiming to hide who is communicating with whom. Zama develops encryption technology intended to allow computations on data that stays encrypted throughout. Aztec is building a privacy-focused network connected to Ethereum, and Dusk targets privacy-preserving financial applications. Anyone is oriented around anonymous network access.
Taken together, the list shows how privacy has evolved from a single product category into a set of tools that can be layered into oracles, messaging, computation and settlement. For developers, the question is increasingly less about building a private currency and more about adding confidentiality to whatever part of the stack they are working on.
5. How Santiment measures development activity
Santiment's ranking is built from public activity in project repositories on GitHub, the platform where most open-source crypto software is developed and maintained. Rather than simply counting every recorded event, the firm tracks what it considers notable contributions, such as commits and pull requests, and filters out lower-value actions like forks of a repository or updates unrelated to the project's actual code.
The goal of that filtering is to capture genuine engineering output instead of superficial activity that can inflate raw counts. A project that is copied many times, for example, might register a large number of forks without any of its own developers writing new code. Santiment's method attempts to strip out that noise and focus on the work that moves a project forward.
The data is calculated over a rolling 30-day window, which means the ranking reflects recent effort rather than long-term history. Projects can rise or fall from one update to the next depending on release cycles, the timing of major upgrades and changes in team size.
6. The limits of GitHub-based rankings
Development activity scores come with important caveats. Because Santiment counts only public GitHub activity, work done in private repositories or on other platforms does not appear in the totals. A project that keeps significant parts of its development out of public view could be more active than its ranking suggests.
The metric also measures the quantity of meaningful contributions rather than their quality. A burst of small fixes can register more activity than a single, carefully engineered upgrade that took months to prepare. Two projects with similar scores may therefore be at very different stages of maturity or ambition.
For those reasons, Santiment presents development activity as one data point to be weighed alongside on-chain metrics and social data, not as a standalone signal to buy or sell. It is most useful as a rough indicator of whether a team is actively building and as a way to spot projects whose engineering momentum is changing.
7. A recurring set of leaders
The November list continues a pattern visible across Santiment's privacy rankings published through 2025 and 2026. Dash, HOPR and NYM have repeatedly appeared among the projects drawing the most builder attention, suggesting that their development activity is consistent rather than tied to a single release.
That consistency matters to analysts who use these rankings to separate projects with lasting engineering commitment from those whose activity spikes briefly around a launch or marketing push and then fades. A project that holds a top position across many updates is, at minimum, sustaining a level of work that many crypto teams struggle to maintain.
At the same time, the mix of names in the top ten keeps shifting as newer infrastructure projects compete for position with established privacy coins. Zcash and Monero, two of the most recognized privacy assets, sit in the middle of the table in this edition, behind several projects that approach privacy from an infrastructure angle.
8. Why developer activity draws investor attention
Analysts have long treated developer engagement as one of the few fundamental indicators available for open-source crypto projects. Unlike traditional companies, most blockchain networks do not publish earnings or detailed operating figures, so observers look for other ways to judge whether a project is alive and improving. Public code repositories offer one of the most transparent windows available, since anyone can see when contributors are writing and merging new work.
The logic is straightforward. Software that is not maintained tends to accumulate security risks, falls behind competing designs and eventually loses users. A team that keeps shipping fixes, features and upgrades is at least giving its network a chance to stay relevant. That is why rankings like Santiment's attract attention even though they do not predict short-term price action.
In the privacy sector, ongoing engineering carries particular weight. Privacy systems depend on cryptography that must be implemented carefully and updated as new research emerges, and a flaw in that machinery can expose exactly the information users are trying to protect. Projects in this category also face persistent scrutiny from regulators and exchanges over how private transactions might be misused, which raises the stakes for teams trying to demonstrate that their technology is robust and actively stewarded.
9. What the ranking means for traders and builders
Development activity does not translate into price movements on any predictable schedule. Santiment frames strong activity as a possible sign of long-term project health, an indication that a team is maintaining and improving its software, rather than as a near-term trading signal.
For traders, the ranking can serve as a filter when researching the privacy sector, highlighting which projects have active development behind them and which may be stagnating. It says little about valuation, adoption or regulatory risk, all of which can weigh heavily on privacy-focused assets regardless of how much code their teams ship.
For builders, the list offers a snapshot of where engineering energy in the privacy space is concentrated. The strong showing of networking and computation projects alongside older privacy coins suggests that much of the current effort is aimed at making confidentiality a feature available across the crypto stack, rather than confining it to a handful of specialized currencies.
Santiment publishes these rankings regularly, so the next update will show whether Dash can hold its position at the top and whether HOPR's climb continues or Chainlink reclaims ground.