Dash leads Santiment’s latest ranking of privacy-focused crypto projects by development activity. Chainlink ranks second, followed by HOPR.
Published on November 13, 2026, the list measures what developers shipped over the previous 30 days.
Who made the cut
Crypto analytics platform Santiment ranked privacy projects based on their GitHub activity over a 30-day period. Dash ($DASH) topped the list, ahead of Chainlink ($LINK) and HOPR ($HOPR).
The remaining projects in the top ten were Zama ($ZAMA), NYM ($NYM), Zcash ($ZEC), Monero ($XMR), Dusk ($DUSK), Aztec ($AZTEC) and Anyone ($ANYONE).
Compared with its previous update, Santiment marked Dash and HOPR as rising and Chainlink as slightly falling.
The ranking features established privacy coins, including Dash, Zcash and Monero, as well as infrastructure projects such as Chainlink and HOPR. The latter incorporate privacy technology but are not privacy coins in the classic sense.
How Santiment counts the work
Santiment’s methodology tracks notable GitHub contributions, such as commits and pull requests, while filtering out lower-value activity like forks and irrelevant updates.
The aim is to measure actual engineering output rather than activity that merely appears to show progress. The method has limitations: it tracks public GitHub activity, so work in private repositories or off-platform is not captured. It also measures the quantity, not the quality, of meaningful contributions.
Santiment describes the metric as one of several inputs. It is intended to be considered alongside on-chain and social data, not treated as a standalone buy signal.
A recurring scoreboard
Santiment has published several comparable rankings of privacy development activity across 2025 and 2026. Projects including Dash, HOPR and NYM have continued to attract builder attention across those reports.
The latest update also reflects how the privacy category has broadened. It now includes more than coins primarily designed to conceal transaction details, extending to infrastructure that adds privacy features to other parts of the crypto stack, including oracles and anonymity tools. This helps explain why Chainlink, Zama and Aztec appear alongside Monero.
What the ranking means for traders and builders
For traders, a key caveat is that development activity does not move prices on a set schedule. Santiment says high activity can indicate long-term project health, but it does not necessarily mean prices will move in the near term.
Dash’s move to the top is notable for one of the privacy sector’s older names. HOPR’s rise to third suggests infrastructure-style privacy work is receiving more engineering effort. Chainlink’s slight decline is minor on its own.
