I've always been curious about the concept of "on-chain payroll," until I really thought it through and started to have doubts.

The question is straightforward and blunt: if you use a transparent public blockchain, it means the company is essentially making all employee salaries, performance bonuses, consultant fees, and every payment to suppliers public knowledge. You don't need gossip or internal leaks; just open a block explorer, and it's clear who received how much, when the payment was made, and which service provider it was sent to. Even more revealing is that the company's operational rhythm is fully exposed: if expenses suddenly double this month, people immediately start guessing—are there mass layoffs, is the company spending big on marketing, or is there a cash flow problem? Blockchains are originally meant to improve efficiency, but it turns into an "auto-captioned live broadcast"—who would want that?

But the reality is, companies do need more efficient and traceable fund management. Especially as DAOs and remote international teams become more common, incentive distributions, outsourcing settlements, and tool expenses are real needs. Traditional banking systems are slow, expensive, and complicated for cross-border transactions—these pain points have always been there. The core issue becomes: I want to move processes onto the chain to improve efficiency, but I don't want to expose all internal company details.

This is a more practical solution: daily payments and settlements can remain confidential, so salaries, reimbursements, and contract amounts aren't exposed to the entire internet; but when financial audits are needed, or proof is required for investors or regulators, a selective disclosure mechanism can be used to reveal the necessary information. From another perspective, privacy is a fundamental setting, and audit channels are opened on demand—not a forced binary choice.

If the blockchain is to take on more real-world organizational operations in the future, I believe this kind of "usable, verifiable, and not awkward" foundational layer will become increasingly critical. Many privacy-focused solutions on the market only focus on privacy technology itself, but the real value lies in—can they enable enterprises to naturally incorporate these tools into their daily operations, rather than privacy for privacy's sake? The on-chain world shouldn't force everyone to go naked; nobody really wants to publicly share payroll details.