Zama

Adds encrypted balances and transfer amounts to tokens on existing blockchains such as Ethereum, using fully homomorphic encryption.

LiveConfidential tokens

Live on Ethereum since 30 Dec 2025 and on Polygon since Aug 2026, though the Polygon wrapper held only about $6 of USDC on 16 Oct 2026; the ZAMA token is also on BNB Smart Chain, HyperEVM and Solana, where Zama's documentation lists no confidential tokens.

TVL: $131.1MDefiLlama, 18 Oct 2026
Launched: 30 Dec 2025
Token: ZAMA
Chains: Ethereum and Polygon

Checked on 16 Oct 2026. Information only, not investment advice.

How it works

Zama is a confidentiality layer that runs on top of existing blockchains rather than as a chain of its own. It uses fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE, a kind of encryption that lets a computer add, subtract and compare numbers while they stay encrypted, so a smart contract can keep a balance as an encrypted value and update it without anyone seeing the figure. Its main use so far is confidential tokens: an ordinary token such as USDC or USDT is deposited into a wrapper contract, which issues an encrypted version such as cUSDC or cUSDT, backed by the tokens the wrapper holds and following a token standard called ERC-7984.

The blockchain does not do the heavy encrypted maths itself. When a contract asks for an encrypted operation, the chain records the request, and five operators known as coprocessors, one of them Zama, carry out the computation and agree on the result by majority, coordinated through a dedicated rollup that Zama calls the Gateway. No single party holds the key that could unlock everything: it is split between 13 operators, Zama among them, which run inside secure hardware and only decrypt a value when the access rules recorded on-chain allow it, for example for the owner of a balance. Zero-knowledge proofs play a narrower role: they show that the encrypted values users submit were formed correctly.

This differs from the zero-knowledge approach used by shielded pools such as Railgun or Zcash. There, each user keeps their own secrets and proves facts about them, so there is no shared key whose holders could reveal everyone's data. Zama instead keeps everyone's data encrypted under one shared network key and computes on it directly, which lets encrypted values from many users interact inside ordinary smart contracts, but its confidentiality depends on the key holders not colluding.

Zama hides amounts, not participants. Balances, the size of each transfer and values inside confidential applications, such as the amounts bid in its January 2026 token auction, stay encrypted. The sending and receiving addresses of every transfer remain public, as do the time of each transaction and the contract used. Wrapping and unwrapping are visible too: the amount deposited is public and the amount withdrawn is publicly decrypted, so similar sums going in and out at similar times can be linked. The owner of each wrapper can also appoint observers who can decrypt every balance and transfer in that token, for example to meet reporting or compliance obligations, and the list of observers is public.

Token

ZAMA ZAMA is used to pay the protocol's encryption and decryption fees, which are burned, and can be staked with the operators who run the network to earn newly minted rewards.

Team and governance

Built by Zama, an open-source cryptography company founded in 2020 by Rand Hindi, its chief executive, and Pascal Paillier, its chief technology officer; it is funded by venture capital, including a $73M Series A in 2024 and a $57M Series B in 2025 that it said valued it above $1B, and by its January 2026 token auction. Protocol changes are voted on by the operators through an Aragon DAO on Ethereum, with one equal vote each regardless of stake; cross-chain messages carry decisions to the other chains, with local multisig wallets as a fallback, and dedicated multisigs govern BNB Smart Chain, HyperEVM and Solana.

TVL over time

$131.1M TVL now
+81.9% in 30 days
$132.6M highest daily TVL, 17 Oct 2026

Daily total value locked (TVL) from DefiLlama since 4 May 2026, with the current value refreshed every hour. The latest value is from 18 Oct 2026, 04:12 UTC. TVL is the reserves backing confidential token wrappers. It includes Zama's own ZAMA token, and much of it is Morpho vault shares that also count in Morpho's TVL. The series is in protocol-zama.json, listed on the Data page.

What it hides and what it does not

What it hides

Balances, and the size of each transfer.
Values inside confidential applications, such as the amounts bid in its January 2026 token auction.

What it does not hide

The sending and receiving addresses of every transfer.
The time of each transaction and the contract used.
Wrapping and unwrapping: the amount deposited is public and the amount withdrawn is publicly decrypted, so similar sums going in and out at similar times can be linked.
Every balance and transfer in a token, to the observers its wrapper's owner appoints; the list of observers is public.
Everyone's data, if enough of the 13 operators that hold shares of the decryption key colluded and got past the secure hardware they run in.

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

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

Date	Firm	Scope and findings
Not dated	Trail of Bits	Listed in Trail of Bits' public library as a security review of Zama dated October 2025, without a day; the listing names no components and links only to Zama's litepaper, not to a report. Zama names Trail of Bits among the firms that audited the protocol. Sources: Zama security review Trail of Bits; Zama Protocol testnet update: MPC partners, better performance, audits and new features Zama, 14 Nov 2025
Not dated	Zenith	Named by Zama, in its November 2025 testnet update and in its litepaper, as one of the protocol's auditors; Zama says the audits together covered every component of the protocol but does not say which firm reviewed which, and links no report. Sources: Zama Protocol testnet update: MPC partners, better performance, audits and new features Zama, 14 Nov 2025; Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol litepaper Zama
16 May 2025	OpenZeppelin	Confidential fungible token and ERC-20 wrapper contracts in OpenZeppelin's confidential contracts library for Zama's FHEVM, reviewed from 5 to 16 May 2025: nine issues, none critical, high or medium, seven resolved. Zama's deployed wrappers are an upgradeable port of the library's later 0.4.0 wrapper code, kept in Zama's own repository, so this review does not cover them directly. Sources: Zama Confidential Fungible Token Audit OpenZeppelin, 18 Mar 2026; ConfidentialWrapper.sol Zama on GitHub; ERC7984ERC20WrapperUpgradeable.sol Zama on GitHub
31 Oct 2025	OpenZeppelin	Release 0.3.0 of the same library, reviewed from 20 to 31 Oct 2025, covering the ERC-7984 token and its extensions, including the ERC-20 wrapper, freezing, observer access and restrictions: 13 issues, one medium, 12 resolved. Zama's deployed wrappers are ported from the later 0.4.0 release. Sources: Zama Confidential Contracts 0.3.0 Release Audit OpenZeppelin, 18 Mar 2026; ERC7984ERC20WrapperUpgradeable.sol Zama on GitHub
Not dated	Burrasec	Named by Zama in its November 2025 testnet update as one of the firms that audited the protocol; Zama says the audits together covered every component but does not say which firm reviewed which, and links no report. Source: Zama Protocol testnet update: MPC partners, better performance, audits and new features Zama, 14 Nov 2025
Not dated	Alexandra Institute	Named by Zama in its November 2025 testnet update as one of the firms that audited the protocol; Zama says the audits together covered every component but does not say which firm reviewed which, and links no report. Source: Zama Protocol testnet update: MPC partners, better performance, audits and new features Zama, 14 Nov 2025

Incidents

Two incidents, oldest first: flaws, exploits, sanctions, prosecutions and other events that affected the project or its users.

6 Jan 2026

The protocol's access-control contract on Ethereum, which records which addresses may use or decrypt each encrypted value, was paused at 14:17 UTC on 6 Jan 2026 by an address authorised to pause it and unpaused at 15:41 UTC through the execution of a governance proposal. Zama's reason for the pause has not been confirmed.

Sources: ACL pause transaction on Ethereum Blockscout, 6 Jan 2026; ACL unpause transaction on Ethereum Blockscout, 6 Jan 2026; Host contract addresses Zama documentation; Pausing Zama documentation
29 May 2026

A US federal court order in a class action over Overnight Finance, an unrelated protocol, led Circle to blacklist the Ethereum cUSDC wrapper at 01:08 UTC on 30 May 2026, the evening of 29 May in California, because a disputed deposit made up more than 99% of the pool, locking about $12.6M of USDC that backed every holder's cUSDC; The Block reported that Zama's chief executive said Zama would pause cUSDC, cUSDT and cWETH while it investigated. Circle removed the block at 18:58 UTC on 1 Jun 2026 after the court lifted the freeze, and Zama announced the next day that all systems were back to normal.

Sources: The freeze on Zama's cUSDC contract has been lifted and all systems are back to normal Zama, 2 Jun 2026; Court-ordered Circle freeze traps $12.6 million in Zama cUSDC contract amid Overnight Finance suit The Block, 30 May 2026; USDC Blacklisted events for the Ethereum cUSDC wrapper Blockscout, 30 May 2026; USDC UnBlacklisted events for the Ethereum cUSDC wrapper Blockscout, 1 Jun 2026; Contract addresses: Ethereum mainnet Zama documentation

Milestones

Ten milestones, oldest first.

25 Jun 2025
Zama announced the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol alongside its Series B, with a first testnet already live.
Source: Announcing our Series B and the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol Zama, 25 Jun 2025
1 Jul 2025
The public testnet of the protocol opened.
Source: Zama Protocol testnet update: MPC partners, better performance, audits and new features Zama, 14 Nov 2025
30 Dec 2025
Zama announced that the protocol was live on Ethereum mainnet after completing the first confidential USDT (cUSDT) transfers, which went on-chain from 13:15 UTC that day through a wrapper deployed on 26 Dec 2025; a February 2026 Zama blog post gives the date as 31 Dec 2025.
Sources: Zama Protocol is on mainnet Zama community forum, 30 Dec 2025; cUSDT wrapper contract on Ethereum, contract record Blockscout; cUSDT wrapper event logs from 30 Dec 2025 Routescan, 30 Dec 2025; Zama Developer Program Mainnet Season 1: building for the long game Zama, 11 Feb 2026
21 Jan 2026
Zama sold its token through an auction on the protocol from 21 to 24 Jan 2026 in which bid prices were public and bid amounts encrypted; it reported 11,103 unique bidders, and 880M ZAMA, 8% of the initial supply, sold at a clearing price of $0.05.
Source: The Zama Public Auction: $118M committed for the first encrypted ICO on Ethereum Zama, 26 Jan 2026
2 Feb 2026
ZAMA token claims and trading opened, with the token deployed on Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Solana.
Source: $ZAMA token launch: TGE date, exchanges and token utility Zama, 2 Feb 2026
20 May 2026
Zama acquired TokenOps, a platform for token distributions, vesting and airdrops that it said had handled more than $2B of distributions; TokenOps continues as an independent brand and the terms were not disclosed.
Source: Zama acquires TokenOps: confidential and fully compliant token distributions, airdrops and vesting Zama, 20 May 2026
23 Jun 2026
A confidential USDC vault on Morpho, curated by Steakhouse Financial, opened for deposits as the first yield venue for cUSDC.
Sources: The first DeFi yield venue for confidential USDC (cUSDC) in partnership with Morpho and Steakhouse Financial Zama, 17 Jun 2026; Steakhouse Confidential Prime USDC vault on Morpho: now live Zama, 23 Jun 2026
21 Aug 2026
A confidential USDC wrapper was deployed on Polygon, and Zama's developer kit added Polygon support in a release dated 26 Aug 2026.
Sources: cUSDC wrapper contract on Polygon, contract record Blockscout; Zama SDK 3.5.x release notes Zama documentation, 26 Aug 2026; Contract addresses: Polygon Zama documentation
15 Sep 2026
Sixteen confidential vaults on Morpho, run by five curators across five assets, and the Zama Confidential Swap Protocol for swapping between confidential assets went live on Ethereum; Zama's September recap, published on 1 Oct 2026, put the value shielded at more than $90M.
Sources: Confidential DeFi at scale Zama, 15 Sep 2026; Zama newsletter: confidential DeFi at scale, the DefiLlama report, $ZAMA on Solana, and more Zama, 1 Oct 2026
24 Sep 2026
Zama announced that the ZAMA token was live on Solana through Sunrise; this covers the token only, and Zama said bringing FHE-based confidentiality to Solana itself was a next step.
Sources: $ZAMA is now trading on Solana via Sunrise Zama, 24 Sep 2026; Contract addresses: Solana Zama documentation

Funding

Three sources of funding, oldest first. Amounts are in US dollars; a dash means the sources give no US dollar figure.

Date	Round	Amount	Investors
7 Mar 2024	Series A Source: The Zama FHE master plan: $73M Series A and the road ahead Zama, 7 Mar 2024	$73M	Multicoin Capital, Protocol Labs, Metaplanet, Blockchange, VSquared, Stake Capital, Portal Ventures
25 Jun 2025	Series B Source: Announcing our Series B and the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol Zama, 25 Jun 2025	$57M	Pantera Capital, Blockchange
24 Jan 2026	Public token auction, 880M ZAMA at $0.05 Source: The Zama Public Auction: $118M committed for the first encrypted ICO on Ethereum Zama, 26 Jan 2026	$44M	–

Risks

Zama hides amounts but not who transacts or when: every confidential transfer shows both addresses and its timing, and the public amounts at the wrapping and unwrapping steps can link deposits to withdrawals. Its confidentiality rests on trusting operators as well as on the encryption. The 13 operators that hold shares of the decryption key could in principle decrypt data if enough of them colluded and got past the secure hardware they run in, and a 2025 OpenZeppelin audit noted that coprocessors submit no validity proofs for their results. Any single operator can pause parts of the protocol, and the access-control contract on Ethereum was paused for about 84 minutes on 6 Jan 2026; only a governance vote of the operators can unpause it or approve upgrades. Each wrapper's owner, initially the operators' DAO, can upgrade it and appoint observers who can see every balance and transfer; none were set on cUSDC, cUSDT or cWETH on 16 Oct 2026, and Zama's documentation says ownership will later pass to the owner of the underlying token. Wrappers also enforce deny lists, including the underlying token's, so a stablecoin issuer's freeze reaches confidential holders: in May 2026 a court-ordered Circle freeze locked the whole cUSDC pool over a deposit tied to an unrelated dispute, until the court lifted it days later. Zama then said confidential tokens would mirror freezes on their underlying assets and that a compliance council would review legal requests. Pools can be small and concentrated, as the depositor in that case held more than 99% of the cUSDC shielded at the time, and several of the audits Zama cites have no public report.