PriFi.info

Penumbra

A proof-of-stake chain in the Cosmos ecosystem where every asset sits in one shielded pool, with a built-in exchange that batches trades and private staking, live since July 2024.

No reliable dataPrivate DEX / lending

Penumbra's mainnet has run since July 2024, with node version 2.1.1 published in January 2026; the site lists its exchange as having no reliable data because DefiLlama's adapter stopped updating in June 2025.

TVL
$11KDefiLlama, 25 Jun 2025
Launched
Jul 2024
Token
UM
Chains
Penumbra

Checked on 23 Oct 2026. Information only, not investment advice.

How it works

Penumbra is a proof-of-stake blockchain built with the Cosmos tools CometBFT and IBC, designed above all for private trading. Its mainnet, chain penumbra-1, produced its first block in July 2024 and started with only transfers and governance switched on, with IBC transfers and the exchange to be enabled by later governance proposals. All value on the chain sits in a multi-asset shielded pool, a design extended from Zcash's Sapling: balances are notes encrypted so that only their owner, and anyone the owner chooses, can read them, and every transaction carries zero-knowledge proofs that it spends notes the user owns without revealing which. The proofs use parameters from a multi-party setup ceremony that Penumbra calls the summoning ceremony. Assets arrive from other chains over IBC, the Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol, and are shielded on arrival; sending them back out unshields them. Penumbra's website says its light clients, such as the Prax browser wallet, make the proofs on users' devices, and that only those devices and the recipients a user chooses can decrypt the data.

The exchange batches the swaps in each block and fills them at a clearing price the chain computes for that block, rather than one by one. A swap publicly burns the input assets and privately mints the outputs to the trader. Liquidity comes from concentrated liquidity positions that anyone can open: the positions are public, with the liquidity they hold and the price range it covers, but they are opened and closed anonymously. Staking also happens inside the shielded pool: UM delegated to a validator becomes delegation tokens held as private notes, so the chain shows how much is staked with each validator but not who staked it, and delegators can vote privately in governance. Version 2.0.0, released on 13 June 2025, added a liquidity tournament and encrypted the metadata of liquidity positions.

Some things stay visible. The amount and asset going into each swap are disclosed before it executes, which Penumbra's specification says gives other participants the information needed to manipulate trades, and the sealed-bid swaps that would hide them are described as a future upgrade. Liquidity positions, the total staked with each validator and every IBC transfer into or out of Penumbra, with its amount and the address on the other chain, are public, and the specification warns that users must take care not to link their positions to themselves by timing or amount. DefiLlama tracked the exchange from February to June 2025, when its adapter stopped updating, and its highest daily value in the site's history is about $191,000, on 23 February 2025; Penumbra's website showed a 30-day trading volume of $3.77 million on 23 October 2026.

TVL over time

Daily total value locked (TVL) from DefiLlama since 6 Feb 2025, with the current value refreshed every hour. DefiLlama's adapter stopped updating in June 2025. The series is in protocol-penumbra.json, listed on the Data page.

What it hides and what it does not

What it hides

  • Balances, and the sender, recipient and amount of transfers inside the shielded pool.
  • Which account is behind a swap, a liquidity position or a delegation, and the outputs a swap mints.
  • How delegators vote in governance.

What it does not hide

  • The amount and asset going into each swap, disclosed before it executes.
  • Liquidity positions, with the liquidity they hold and their price ranges.
  • The total UM staked with each validator.
  • Transfers into and out of Penumbra over IBC, with their amounts and the addresses on the other chain.
  • The timing and amounts that, as the specification warns, can link positions to their owners.

Drawn from how it works, above; the sources are listed at the end of the page. Where privacy still leaks explains the patterns, such as timing and amounts, that can give users of any design away.

Audits

Seven security reviews, oldest first, with what each covered and found. Dates are when each report was issued, unless the entry says otherwise.

DateFirmScope and findings
NCC Group

Review of Penumbra's implementation of decaf377, the group it uses for its cryptography, and of the selection of parameters for the Poseidon hash function.

Source: Public Report: Penumbra Labs decaf377 Implementation and Poseidon Parameter Selection Review NCC Group, 12 Sep 2022
NCC Group

Review of the protocol design, mainly the multi-asset shielded pool extended from Zcash Sapling, the statements proved in zero knowledge and their implementation in Rust; 8 issues, 1 of them critical and 3 informational, all above informational fixed and confirmed in a follow-up review.

Sources: Public Report: Penumbra Labs R1CS Implementation Review NCC Group, 21 Aug 2023; Penumbra Security Audits Q3 2023 Penumbra, 21 Aug 2023
zkSecurity

All the zero-knowledge circuits of release 0.56.0, reviewed by three consultants over five person-weeks from 10 July 2023; 10 issues, 5 informational, including a wrong in-circuit derivation of the incoming viewing key that would have allowed a note to be spent twice and a missing duplicate check that would have allowed double voting, both fixed. The date is that of Penumbra's summary.

Sources: Audit of Penumbra's Circuits zkSecurity; Penumbra Security Audits Q3 2023 Penumbra, 21 Aug 2023
Not dated Zellic

Application audit of the shielded pool, staking and exchange components: 16 findings, 5 critical, among them dummy spends that allowed minting arbitrary funds, forged delegation tokens that raised voting power and colliding position IDs that allowed withdrawing more than was deposited; all but the informational one were fixed. Penumbra Labs summarised it on 7 June 2024 and gives no report date.

Sources: Penumbra assessment report Zellic; Penumbra Security Audits Q2 2024 Penumbra, 7 Jun 2024
Not dated Violet

Review of the zero-knowledge circuits: 1 critical finding, which let attackers claim swap outputs at the clearing price of a different batch, fixed in pull request 4239, and 3 informational ones. Summarised by Penumbra Labs on 7 June 2024.

Sources: Penumbra circuit audit report Violet (HackMD); Penumbra Security Audits Q2 2024 Penumbra, 7 Jun 2024
Not dated Electric Coin Company

Further review of the zero-knowledge circuits, commissioned as extra assurance: 1 high finding, which concerned only a planned future design with flow encryption and so needed no change for mainnet, 2 low, 1 informational and 2 about incomplete documentation. Summarised by Penumbra Labs on 7 June 2024.

Sources: Penumbra circuit review Electric Coin Company (HackMD); Penumbra Security Audits Q2 2024 Penumbra, 7 Jun 2024
Not dated Zellic

Audit of Penumbra's IBC code: 3 high findings, about ICS-20 timeouts on ordered channels, upgrade handling and overly permissive handshakes, 3 medium, 1 low and 4 informational, all fixed before a chain upgrade. Summarised by Penumbra Labs on 7 June 2024.

Source: Penumbra Security Audits Q2 2024 Penumbra, 7 Jun 2024

Incidents

One incident that affected the project or its users.

  1. The penumbra-1 chain halted at block 3,093,519 when a transaction both closed and withdrew a liquidity position that the exchange had already closed automatically, which tripped a safety check at the end of the block; Penumbra Labs published version 0.81.2 as a hotfix and told all nodes and validators to update immediately.

    Sources: Release v0.81.2 GitHub (penumbra-zone), 18 Jan 2025; Penumbra releases GitHub (penumbra-zone)

Milestones

Nine milestones, oldest first.

  1. Penumbra Labs announced a $4.75 million seed round, led by Dragonfly Capital, to incubate Penumbra as a fully shielded layer 1 in the Cosmos ecosystem.

    Source: Penumbra Labs Raises Seed Round To Build Private, Decentralized Exchange Penumbra, 4 Nov 2021

  2. After two audits, Penumbra Labs finalised its zero-knowledge circuits for the setup ceremony and shipped them in testnet 59, Enceladus.

    Sources: Penumbra Security Audits Q3 2023 Penumbra, 21 Aug 2023; Penumbra's Summoning Ceremony Begins Penumbra

  3. Penumbra's mainnet, chain penumbra-1, produced its first block, starting with transfers and governance only; its genesis validators were chosen through an airdrop claim run by Radiant Commons that gathered the community's preferences.

    Sources: The Final Summoning Rites, Part 2: Mainnet Phase 0 Penumbra forum; Eliminating linkability when paying for Sentinel dVPN service MathNodes, 13 Jul 2025

  4. Version 0.81.0 brought breaking changes that needed a passed upgrade proposal, including transparent addresses for compatibility with other chains and outbound packet forwarding for IBC transfers across several chains.

    Source: Release v0.81.0 GitHub (penumbra-zone), 18 Dec 2024

  5. Penumbra Labs released version 1.0.0 of the node software and published its code libraries on crates.io as the penumbra-sdk crates.

    Source: Release v1.0.0 GitHub (penumbra-zone), 21 Jan 2025

  6. Version 2.0.0, applied through an upgrade proposal, added a liquidity tournament (UIP-LQT) and encrypted the metadata of liquidity positions (UIP-9).

    Source: Release v2.0.0 GitHub (penumbra-zone), 13 Jun 2025

  7. DefiLlama's adapter for Penumbra's exchange recorded its last value, about $11,000, after a high of about $191,000 on 23 February 2025.

    Source: Penumbra DEX protocol TVL data DefiLlama, 23 Oct 2026

  8. Version 2.1.0, the latest release that needed an upgrade proposal, added a framework for state migrations and hard-fork upgrades, a way to recover IBC clients through such an upgrade and a faster route search for the exchange.

    Source: Release v2.1.0 GitHub (penumbra-zone), 28 Aug 2025

  9. Penumbra Labs published node versions 2.1.1 and 2.0.6, which update CometBFT, the most recent releases when this profile was checked.

    Source: Penumbra releases GitHub (penumbra-zone)

Funding

One source of funding. Amounts are in US dollars; a dash means the sources give no US dollar figure.

DateRoundAmountInvestors

Seed round for Penumbra Labs, led by Dragonfly Capital

Source: Penumbra Labs Raises Seed Round To Build Private, Decentralized Exchange Penumbra, 4 Nov 2021

 $4.75M Dragonfly Capital, Interchain Foundation, Lemniscap, Robot Ventures, Volt Capital, Figment, Strangelove Ventures, Informal Systems, ZKValidator

Risks

Penumbra's privacy depends on a small set of users: DefiLlama counted at most about $191,000 in its exchange before its adapter stopped in June 2025, and Penumbra's website showed a 30-day trading volume of $3.77 million in October 2026. Swap inputs are public before they execute, so trades can be front-run or linked by amount and timing, and IBC transfers in and out are public on both chains. Audits before mainnet found several critical bugs, including ones that would have allowed double spends, minting arbitrary funds and forging delegation tokens, all reported as fixed, and the chain halted at block 3,093,519 in January 2025 until a hotfix. The proofs rely on a setup ceremony that stays sound only if at least one participant destroyed their secret contribution. Development rests mainly on Penumbra Labs, funded by a 2021 seed round, and the node software has changed little since August 2025: the January 2026 releases only updated CometBFT.

Sources

The documents this profile rests on. Each audit, incident, milestone and funding round above also links its own sources.

Checked on 23 Oct 2026. Confidence: confirmed. Information only, not investment, legal or tax advice.

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