Zama

Zama is an open-source cryptography company building Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solutions for blockchain. Its core product, the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol, enables confidential assets to be issued, traded and managed natively on public blockchains while preserving public verifiability and programmable compliance. The protocol runs on any L1 or L2 without requiring a new chain or a trusted intermediary, keeping amounts and balances encrypted at all times, including during computation.

The company positions confidentiality as a prerequisite for institutions in regulated markets to operate onchain, and targets five solution areas: confidential real-world-asset tokenization, confidential payments and payroll, confidential DeFi and trading, and confidential token distribution (vesting, airdrops, allocations). Developers build using a Solidity library (@fhevm/solidity), the ERC-7984 confidential token standard implemented in OpenZeppelin's confidential contracts, and a TypeScript SDK, without needing to learn a new language or handle cryptography directly.

Beyond the protocol, Zama maintains open-source FHE libraries including TFHE-rs (a Rust implementation of TFHE), Concrete (a TFHE compiler in Python) and Concrete ML (machine learning models in FHE). Earlier work also included a compiler translating Python programs into FHE equivalents and a library for interacting with the Ethereum Virtual Machine using homomorphic encryption. Zama supports a community forum, Discord channel, documentation site and a developer program.

Founding story

Rand Hindi, whose background is in computer science with a PhD in bioinformatics and who previously founded the AI voice platform Snips (acquired by Sonos), and Pascal Paillier, a cryptography expert who became Zama's CTO, began working on the underlying technology as early as 2016. The breakthrough came in 2019 when they developed algorithms that sped up FHE calculations by about 100x, which Hindi described as the unlock that let them turn the research into a business.

Business model

Zama develops FHE cryptography and open-source developer libraries, and operates the Zama Protocol as confidentiality infrastructure that other applications and institutions build on. Commercialization began around late 2023; the CEO stated that pricing varies by customer type, with token-based customers charged in tokens and banks using private blockchains charged per transaction. The company also has an associated $ZAMA token with staking, bridging and purchase options linked from its website.

The CEO described charging customers in tokens when they have a token, and per transaction when the customer is a bank using a private blockchain. Roughly six months after starting commercialization, Zama said it had signed more than $50 million in contract value, a rough estimate because not all customers pay in fiat.

Traction

As of the March 2024 Series A, Zama reported about 3,000 developers using its GitHub-published FHE libraries and more than $50 million in signed contract value roughly six months after beginning commercialization. The company now reports 119 employees, including 37 PhDs from 26 nationalities. Named ecosystem deployments on Ethereum mainnet include Morpho, T-REX, Bron, Raycash, Blockscout and GSR, and the website displays a cumulative total-value-shielded metric.

Latest developments

Zama's site highlights live deployments on Ethereum mainnet: GSR executing a confidential OTC trade between KYC'd counterparties; Bron paying salaries with confidential USDT; confidential USDC earning yield through the Steakhouse USDC Prime vault on Morpho; T-REX Ledger adopting Zama as its default confidentiality layer for RWA infrastructure; Raycash building a self-custodial banking experience with IBANs, cards and yield on Zama's FHE encryption; and Blockscout becoming the first explorer to natively index and display ERC-7984 confidential token activity. The company also lists $ZAMA token staking, bridging and purchase, a litepaper and a "Shielded Report."