Zama has expanded confidential access to 16 curated yield vaults on Morpho, a rollout built on OpenZeppelin and Zama confidential contracts, according to an announcement the privacy-focused project published on September 15, 2026. The claim is so far corroborated only by the parties directly involved rather than by independent reporting.

All 16 vaults are live through Zama's app. The company emphasized that the figure represents the total number of vaults offering confidential access at launch, not 16 vaults added on top of an existing set of 16.

Five curators across 16 vaults

According to Zama, the launch spans five curators: Steakhouse Financial, Armitage by Wintermute, Flowdesk, RockawayX, and Bitwise. In Morpho's vault model, curators are the third-party managers responsible for a vault's strategy and allocations, so the roster of names is as central to the rollout as the asset lineup. The company's breakdown lists 5 Steakhouse vaults, 6 Armitage vaults, 2 Flowdesk vaults, 2 RockawayX vaults, and 1 Bitwise vault.

Zama frames the launch as 4 net-new confidential-only products plus confidential access to 12 existing Morpho vaults, which together make up the 16-vault total. That distinction matters for readers weighing how much of the rollout is genuinely new versus a privacy layer added over vaults that already existed.

The vaults cover five underlying asset classes — USDC, USDT, WBTC, AUSD, and TGBP — alongside their confidential representations, encrypted counterparts of each asset in the mold of June's cUSDC, Zama said. The company also said all 16 vaults and its Confidential Swap Protocol are live via its app, with additional access through Utila, Zerion Wallet, and Yield.xyz planned in the weeks after launch.

Builds on a June confidential USDC vault

The expansion builds on a narrower starting point. In a June 17, 2026 announcement, Zama scheduled its original Steakhouse confidential USDC vault to open for deposits on June 23, 2026, routing deposits into the underlying USDC Prime vault on Morpho. That product used Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) — a form of cryptography that allows computation on data while it stays encrypted — to keep cUSDC amounts and balances encrypted onchain, according to Zama. The design is notable because balances and transfer amounts on public blockchains are readable by anyone by default; encrypting them narrows what an outside observer can learn about an individual depositor's position.

On the incentive side, Zama said deposits accrue Merkl rewards from launch, while claim functionality opens in the following weeks. Depositors authorize Merkl to decrypt balances for reward computation, a step that follows directly from the encrypted-balance design.

Morpho co-founder Merlin Egalite described the addition of confidential vaults as an important step that would scale confidential DeFi without changing the strategy, the liquidity, or the risk profile.

OpenZeppelin and Zama confidential contracts

The expansion is described as running on OpenZeppelin and Zama confidential contracts. OpenZeppelin, which has separately confirmed its role, said its contracts with Zama power the Morpho expansion across the 16 vaults, and that it built the onchain foundation and secured the newly deployed Confidential Swap protocol.

OpenZeppelin's post does not itself specify an audit scope, contract addresses, or a security guarantee, and no audit report was available to establish those details. The claim that Confidential Swap was secured should therefore be read as OpenZeppelin's own statement rather than an independently verified finding.

OpenZeppelin x @Zama Confidential Contracts power Zama’s expansion on @Morpho, now across 16 vaults. Proud to have built this onchain foundation and secured the newly deployed Confidential Swap protocol 🔒

— OpenZeppelin (@OpenZeppelin) September 15, 2026

Source: @OpenZeppelin on X

The available information does not specify the contract versions, the architecture, or which vault operations rely on these components. The mention of OpenZeppelin should not be read as an endorsement, a completed third-party audit, or a security guarantee beyond what the parties have stated.

What remains unconfirmed about the 16 vaults

The core claim rests on Zama and OpenZeppelin, both directly involved in the launch, and no independent secondary report was available at the time of writing. Readers assessing the announcement should treat it as confirmed by the parties rather than as independently verified journalism.

Operational specifics beyond the curator and asset lists — including precise vault identifiers, deposit conditions, and the timing of wallet distribution — are not detailed in the material reviewed, though that does not mean they are absent from Zama's own documentation. No figures for yields, total value locked, fees, or adoption were provided, and none should be inferred.

The announcement fits a wider institutional theme of onchain privacy, similar in spirit to Hedera's push into programmable transaction features and Anchorage's introduction of native swaps on the Robinhood chain. As with recent shifts in Bitcoin ETF flows, the durability of the trend will depend on adoption data that is not yet available for these vaults.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and digital asset markets carry significant risk. Always do your own research before making decisions.