{"id":252423,"date":"2026-05-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/defi-com-ceo-neil-may-challenges-industry-most-defi-projects-are-building-privacy-for-anonymity-not-privacy-for-people\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T09:15:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T13:15:21","slug":"defi-com-ceo-neil-may-challenges-industry-most-defi-projects-are-building-privacy-for-anonymity-not-privacy-for-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/defi-com-ceo-neil-may-challenges-industry-most-defi-projects-are-building-privacy-for-anonymity-not-privacy-for-people\/","title":{"rendered":"defi.com CEO Neil May Challenges Industry: “Most DeFi Projects Are Building Privacy for Anonymity, Not Privacy for People”"},"content":{"rendered":"

defi.com CEO Neil May Challenges Industry: “Most DeFi Projects Are Building Privacy for Anonymity, Not Privacy for People”<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/pinionnewswire.com\/press-release\/defi-com-ceo-neil-may-challenges-industry-most-defi-projects-are-building-privacy-for-anonymity-not-privacy-for-people\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-22 09:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: pinionnewswire.com<\/a><\/p>\n

London, England (PinionNewswire) \u2014 <\/span>As the DeFi sector rushes to integrate zero-knowledge proofs and privacy pools, defi.com CEO Neil May has issued a sharp rebuke to the industry: the vast majority of privacy solutions are solving the wrong problem.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivacy without identity is just hiding,\u201d said May. \u201cThe industry has become obsessed with making transactions invisible, but it has completely ignored the user\u2019s need for a portable, trustworthy identity. You can\u2019t build a financial system where people are anonymous ghosts; you can\u2019t lend to them, you can\u2019t build relationships with them, and they can\u2019t prove they\u2019re not criminals without dumping their entire transaction history.\u201d<\/p>\n

May\u2019s comments challenge a wave of privacy-focused protocols that have raised significant capital and attention. While acknowledging the technical achievements of projects like Tornado Cash successors and ZK-based L2s, May argues that privacy in a vacuum is incomplete; and often counterproductive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnonymity pools are great for whistleblowers and political dissidents. But for everyday users and institutions, they create more problems than they solve,\u201d May said. \u201cHow do you know you\u2019re not receiving funds from a sanctioned wallet? How do you build a credit history if every transaction is erased? The industry has confused privacy with anonymity. Real privacy means you control what you reveal; not that you reveal nothing to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Missing Layer: Portable Identity<\/strong><\/h3>\n

defi.com, which has held the category-defining domain since 2018, is taking a different approach. The company is building what it calls \u201cidentity-first finance\u201d; a system where users have a portable, human-readable DeFi ID that sits atop privacy infrastructure, enabling selective disclosure rather than blanket secrecy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a DeFi ID, you\u2019re not anonymous. But you\u2019re also not exposed,\u201d said Sam Newman, Chief Product Officer at defi.com, who joined the company after…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

defi.com CEO Neil May Challenges Industry: “Most DeFi Projects Are Building Privacy for Anonymity, Not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":252424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/pinionnewswire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Dfi.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252425,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252423\/revisions\/252425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}