Privacy model
zk-pad separates two things that most launchpads tie together: where the fees are (public) and who can spend them (private).
The short version
- Fees accrue to a beneficiary id: a 32-byte hash, not an address. It reveals nothing about the person behind it.
- The beneficiary controls the id with a stealth key: a fresh key that is never funded and never sends a transaction. It only signs messages.
- Relayers submit those signed messages and pay the gas, taking a fee from the claimed amount. The beneficiary never needs BNB.
- Fees can be consolidated into USDT and shielded into Railgun, so the final destination is a private 0zk balance rather than a public address.
- For coins launched for someone who has never used zk-pad, a social-account escrow lets only the owner of a specific X, GitHub or Telegram account claim, after a timelocked and vetoable attestation. This is not available at launch: no attestors are registered yet.
Pages in this section
| Page | Covers |
|---|---|
| Beneficiary ids, stealth keys and relayers | How an id is derived, how a claim link works, what relayers can and cannot do, inactivity fallback |
| Social-account escrows | Attestors, the timelock, vetoes, rebinding |
| Consolidation and Railgun shielding | Turning fees into USDT, shielding to Railgun, shield templates, the 1-hour PPOI standby, anonymity-set caveats |
| What is and is not hidden | An honest table |
| Threat model | Adversaries, what each can learn or do, and the mitigations |
Design principles
- Hide the wallet, not the accounting. Every credit and debit is a public event, so anyone can audit that fees went where the coin said they would.
- No new cryptography. zk-pad uses hash commitments, ECDSA signatures and an existing, audited privacy pool (Railgun). It ships no custom circuits.
- Nobody can redirect a beneficiary. Not the creator, not the protocol, not a relayer.
- Donations need not be stranded. An optional fallback sends unclaimed donations to an NGO after at least 180 days of inactivity (the id must be registered for the sweep to work).
- Be honest about the limits. See what is and is not hidden.