Zama is a confidential blockchain protocol that enables developers to build privacy-preserving smart contracts on any L1 or L2 using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). With FHE, data remains encrypted even during processing, allowing onchain confidentiality without sacrificing public verifiability. The protocol uses coprocessors to offload FHE computations, keeping gas fees low and enabling horizontal scalability. Developers can write confidential smart contracts in Solidity using familiar toolchains, marking encrypted data types with euint to define private fields. Zama supports a range of use cases including confidential DeFi (token swaps, lending, yield farming), private payments, self-custodial banking, confidential token management, RWA tokenization, and sealed-bid auctions. The protocol is already live on mainnet, processing 20 transactions per second per chain, with plans to reach 1,000 tps and eventually 10,000+ tps via FHE ASICs.
Key Benefits
- Enables confidentiality on any L1 or L2 using FHE
- Scalable via coprocessors with low gas fees
- Easy developer experience with Solidity and familiar toolchains
- Programmable compliance for conditional decryption