First looks at how Orb splashes against years of crypto culture.

And so are their orbs. With it, these wizened old geezers could peer into the secrets of this realm and the arcane to grasp secrets that others could only wonder at and at nary a whim too. You think they’ve disappeared, these wizards of old and myth. Those who see understand that they are still with us, only that they go by a different name now. Software Developers. 

You’ll be wondering, what’s this blog editor on about today? Well, you’ve probably heard about Solana’s beloved hairless mascot and if so then you know he’s not just a Co-founder of Solana but also the CEO of Helius labs. 

Well, if you use crypto then you know the first rule. The cardinal truth of our gospel that’s touted to all new converts. Publicly verifiable money and transactions. All across the world irrespective of time, place and fiat currency. 

2025 saw the industry reevaluate and start to value the idea of private money via the ZCash (ZEC) resurgence. 

The first rule that used to be the reason we could onboard normies and steer them away from the problems inherent in Fiat suddenly became a problem with the first rounds of crypto gains taxes looming ahead. That and if someone were to get your address and connect it to you, then they could presumably find out what you’ve been up to onchain. 

Privacy crypto became the meta, and while things still seem to be focused that way, there’s been a new development. 

One of the champions for the privacy movement, Sir Mert of Helius announced the release of Orbs in beta two months prior and then it’s mainnet at Orbmarkets.io in December. 

One of the features of this platform is a block explorer that allows a user to search for tokens and buy them, as well as actually search up wallets and do an AI analyze feature. 

With this development, and from the look of pictures shared by those who have managed to access it, you can get a summary of an address’s onchain behavior. Funding patterns, trading patterns and even whether the owner behind the account has ever used a CEX. All this information and more, orb-tained through Helius’s Orb Explorer. 

Coincidence that this advancement in onchain security and intelligence measures are happening now? I’m hard pressed to say. After all, this topic is gatekept the most by one singular fact: You need to have money to care about privacy.  

What I would say though, is that I’m in absolute awe of Sir Mert’s antics and how each and every single time, he finds a humorous way to get his points across with regards to the privacy narrative. 

His last comment on one of OrbMarkets official X posts was: “Privacy is bad.”. That from the Zolana and Zillions vanguard. 

A witty attempt at sarcasm and yet, no doubt simultaneously juxtaposing the need for a tool that allows you glean some insights about an individual or onchain entity you might want to deal with against the fact that yes, some things are meant to be kept private as much as we can possibly try. 

True, I cackle and hoot loudly at jokes he makes while i’m at my desk and sometimes if i do happen to be at a park at that particular point, I may have to deal with some concerned looks on account of slapping my thighs on rare occasions but you can’t deny that this gimmick in itself is highly effective. He and Helius alone are single handedly creating awareness, exposing a major ecosystem flaw and then driving the privacy narrative all at the same time in a broad stroke of marketing genius that those who can recognize it at work will be able to appreciate. 

This article isn’t technical, and so we won’t go deep into things like the getTransactionAddress feature that’s just been released—I have a free helius RPC API and so i fiddled around a little bit yesterday to check the docs and also saw how much credits we used last year (I basically hired someone for something back then)— but i can tell you for a fact that this is about to become a game changer once people start to incorporate it into tools for Solana apps. 

You might start to see more of the “Analyze Wallet” buttons on apps and that will just be the tip of the iceberg. If you had skeletons to hide or used to make money off bundling and other frowned upon activities on the blockchain, it’ll be time to grow some really thick skin because the wanton days are slowly drawing to a close. 

That said, I believe that Orbmarkets.io’s AI Analzye feature is one that many will be using in 2026 and quite frankly, I can’t wait to get access to it and try it out on my wallets as well. 

I will be signing out now, but my next article will hopefully be about catching you up on all things ICM.Run and SolCypher. 

Until then, I remain digging in the mines for my diamonds.