2026-01-14 07:25:20

FHE Fully Homomorphic Encryption has seen a surge in popularity over the past two years, becoming the new favorite in the privacy track after zero-knowledge proofs. It’s a bit ironic—this technology was introduced in 2009, but only recently has it gained the attention of developers.

What makes Fully Homomorphic Encryption so powerful? In simple terms, it allows computations to be performed directly on encrypted data. Imagine: data never needs to be exposed, yet calculations can still be carried out as usual. This solves the longstanding dilemma between privacy protection and data usability—either privacy is maintained but data can't be used, or data can be used but privacy is compromised. FHE breaks this binary curse.

Why has it only gained attention now? In the early years, the technology lacked maturity and performance was subpar. Recent breakthroughs at the foundational level have significantly improved FHE’s practicality. Coupled with the increasing demand for privacy-preserving computation, this technology has finally moved from theory to real-world application. Developers are beginning to realize that FHE could be a key component of Web3 privacy solutions.

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BlockchainDecoder

· 13h ago

From a technical perspective, the 15-year cold start period actually reflects a deeper issue—the fundamental constraint of performance bottlenecks, rather than simply market awareness problems. It is worth noting that recent algorithm optimizations (especially improvements in the CKKS family) have truly reduced computational overhead from exponential to polynomial levels, which is the key to breaking through FHE limitations. However, to be honest, some projects now mythologize FHE without mentioning the noise accumulation problem in homomorphic computations. Overall, it is indeed an important supplement to privacy solutions, but not a silver bullet. But here’s the question—who will bear the latency costs of FHE in practical applications?

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ChainMelonWatcher

· 13h ago

Wait, it was already around in 2009? So our group just woke up, haha. FHE is really awesome; it can do calculations even in encrypted state. This is the right way to open privacy. Why did these two years suddenly become popular? Turns out performance finally caught up. I should have said so earlier. Our Web3 really needs things like this. No more data running naked all the time. Looking forward to the day FHE surpasses ZK; the privacy race is about to reshuffle.

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Liquidated_Larry

· 13h ago

Wait, this technology has been around for 15 years? Why is it only gaining popularity now, what have they been doing all this time? The performance is really terrible, otherwise it would have been widely adopted long ago. FHE is indeed perfect, but to truly run it efficiently, we still need to tackle the performance bottleneck. After this round of hype, will it just cool off again, like those "revolutionary" technologies before? Calculating directly in encrypted state sounds impressive, but will the gas fees skyrocket as a result? Are developers only now paying attention? It seems like big companies have been quietly working on it for a while. Balancing privacy and usability sounds perfect, but in reality, it's definitely not that simple to implement. If this really becomes commercially viable, I have a feeling the crypto world will once again see a wave of new narratives and hype.

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