Problem

Public-by-default crypto payments expose income and business relationships, creating safety and commercial risks.

ZeroLedger — Challenges & Solutions

Challenge

Support gasless transfers for EOAs and smart wallets via meta-transactions with a fee preview feature.

Solution

• Extend the OpenZeppelin Forwarder with custom, ERC-6492–friendly signature verification.
• Implement a custom Paymaster that validates sponsored gas and the gas required to process meta-transactions.
• Add a helper to detect whether an ERC-20 token supports the ERC-2612 permit.
• Add a helper to detect whether a wallet is not an EOA — even when it’s an uninitialized smart wallet (via isErc6492Signature utility).

Challenge

Enable transfers to non-registered users.

Solution

• Implement a Trusted Encryption Service (TES) that handles data encryption/decryption with wallet-based authentication for users who have not yet registered a public view key with the backend.
• Provide a public spend option to send tokens publicly when needed.

Challenge

Ensure fast & safe synchronisation, including for new users who may already have incoming transactions.

Solution

• Build a save-and-pull indexer that stores events in a short-lived database so any number of services can safely pull them.
• Add a Commitment Manager service to fetch required events over a REST API, avoiding long client-side syncs from chain genesis.
• Reduce the need to process blocks and contract events directly on the client.
• Keep client-side synchronisation as a resilient fallback.

Challenge

Select and design the right zk infrastructure so proofs are secure, small, and fast—balancing security and UX.

Solution

• Adopt PLONK with circom@v2, with a roadmap to migrate to UltraHonk with proof aggregation (after PMF validation).
  Rationale: good client-side proving speed, fixed proof size, and avoidance of toxic-waste-sensitive trusted setups.
• Use a UTXO-like n → m transaction model at the protocol level.
• Implement 10 circuits covering core flows:
  • Deposit: 0 → 3
  • Transfers: 1→1, 1→2, 2→1, 1→3, 3→1, 2→2, 2→3, 3→2, 3→3
  • Consolidation: 8→1, 16→1
• Lazy-load zk keys in the web app to minimise initial load time (keys are large).

Challenge

Deliver fast, confidential, easy-to-use invoicing**. Zeroldger users should be able to accept crypto privately via simple, direct p2p transfer. That means CEX/wallet payers won’t connect to a dApp or approve tokens, but simply invoice.

Solution

• Leverage CREATE2 with EIP-1167 minimal proxies to deploy trustless, withdraw-to-predefined-commitment invoices.
  • The user precomputes the invoice address and notifies the Paymaster.
  • Once the address receives sufficient funds, the Paymaster deploys and executes the invoice contract.
  • Execution deposits funds into the ZeroLedger value contract with predefined commitments assigned to recipients, making the deposit confidential without requiring the payer to connect to a dApp.

https://github.com/zeroledger

https://zeroledger.wtf/

Privacy shouldn’t be a power-user feature. Zeroledger is changing it with:

• 🔒 Compliant-by-design privacy (no KYC): Unlike mixers, ZeroLedger’s alpha shows a new approach: every payment hides amounts with zk-proofs, while keeping sender and receiver addresses visible on-chain. Each transaction adds “decoy recipients,” breaking linkability and concealing real value flows. The result is privacy without pooling funds and payments that are compliant by default, just like normal ERC-20 transfers. The alpha already demonstrates this working end-to-end.

• 📋 Selective Auditability: User can provide full details about a single transaction without disclosing decryption keys, and a regulator can easily verify data integrity via simple hashing logic. The alpha introduces a simple overview of the in-app transaction details and a link to each transaction in Sepolia BaseScan.

• 🛠️ Programmability: The protocol is composable with ERC-20 tokens and smart contracts, making it fully compatible with smart wallets, escrows, and other programmable payment flows. The Alpha uses meta-transactions to provide a gasless payment experience for EOA and smart wallets and trustless, withdraw-only invoices to accept crypto privately via simple, direct transfers.

• ⚡ Cheap instant settlement: The alpha web-app generates zk-proofs on the client side and settles transactions in seconds. The most common transaction type — “2 inputs → 3 outputs” — consumes ~400k gas without optimisations. This means users on L2 can send USDC in 2–3 seconds, paying ~0.01 USDC in fees while paymaster spends 10x less. Check out transaction example

Overall alpha validation: The founder successfully onboarded a dozen non-crypto-aware friends, validating that everyday users can adopt the product quickly.

Next Development Priorities

1. Selective Auditability.

• CSV transaction history exports for lightweight audits — many users hesitate to use privacy tools due to the negative reputation of mixers in traditional finance. By offering simple, transparent reporting, we give users clarity and confidence. This improves trust and supports user retention, a core GTM KPI.

2. Stronger Privacy.

• Bot-initiated payments to grow the anonymity set — early network seeding ensures a stronger privacy baseline. A higher privacy level improves user confidence and retention, creating a positive feedback loop that strengthens privacy further.

ZeroLedger's target customers can be split into two major segments:

Individuals & Small Entities

• Freelancers & Contractors → independent developers, designers, and creators who want to receive borderless crypto payments with privacy, simplicity and self-custody.
• Inflation-stressed households and micro-SMEs - individuals and micro-businesses in hyper-inflation economies who need to receive crypto payments with privacy, simplicity and self-custody.

Organisations

• Crypto Companies & DAOs → payroll, grants, and stipends where amounts shouldn’t be public, but auditability must remain.

Current target customer profile:

• Nigeria-based remote freelancers & gig workers who are paid in USD stablecoins, active on WhatsApp/Telegram/Twitter;

Validation

• Market research:
  • High pain: FX controls, naira volatility, safety/privacy concerns;
  • Crypto-native behaviour already present; low education barrier;
• Alpha testing proved usability: non-crypto friends onboarded in minutes and completed private payments successfully.

Shielded Pools & Mixers (Railgun, Tornado, Privacy Pool, zkBob)

Weaknesses:

• Funds are pooled: if one user is flagged, everyone’s funds look suspicious.
• UX friction: gas-intensive, fixed denominations, delays, internal transfers only to onboarded user, internal transfers are not programmable.
• Complex compliance: all-or-nothing disclosure of history.

Encrypted Rollups (Aztec)

Weaknesses:

• Confined to a single non-EVM rollup;
• Complicated compliance;

Stealth-address wallets (Fluidkey, Curvy)

Weaknesses:

• Centralised viewing/indexing: Requires view access to your addresses to generate/resolve stealth accounts and to index your transactions for the dashboard. Protocols do this via an ENS off-chain resolver that they operate. In practice, the protocol and the user can see the full set of your transactions/addresses, which reduces privacy and adds a third-party data trust assumption.
• Amounts remain public; traceability not fully broken: Stealth addresses provide unlinkability but do not hide amounts and do not break traceability of funds that arrive at each stealth account, enabling on-chain analysis of values and flows.
• Dangerous selective disclosure: Exports/history sharing are possible, but each disclosure contributes to the whole user value-flow de-anonymisation.

How Zeroledger is different

The protocol doesn’t hide everything or pool everyone together. Instead, it makes transactions private in value with multiple but transparent recipients, so compliance works by default just like public ERC-20 transfers. On top of that, it introduces selective disclosure (prove one transaction without exposing your whole history) and programmable payment flows (like escrows or payroll) for internal transfers, so the user does not need to 'unshield' tokens.

With ZeroLedger, users can continue to use their favourite wallets, including multisigs on EVM chains, enjoy private invoicing and fast and cheap direct payments. This balance — privacy + compliance + ecosystem integration — makes ZeroLedger practical for real-world payments.