Cryptography company Zama acquired TokenOps on May 20, bringing Fully Homomorphic Encryption to the token distribution platform that has processed more than $2 billion in transactions for enterprise clients.
"In the legacy onchain world, transparency was a bug disguised as a feature. For an institution, a transparent ledger is an open book for competitors," Rand Hindi, co-founder and CEO of Zama, said in a statement. "Our goal is to make confidentiality the default state for every financial transaction onchain."
The acquisition directly targets the signaling and front-running risks associated with transparent token releases on public blockchains. Analysis from market maker Keyrock, cited by Zama, shows about 90% of tokens underperform the market within 30 days of a public unlock, with average price declines of 17% within 72 hours. The new tooling uses the ERC-7984 confidential token standard to encrypt details like allocations and release schedules onchain.
The technology is already deployed in a production environment, providing confidential token vesting for the institutional real-world asset protocol KAIO, a joint venture between WebN Group and Nomura's Laser Digital. KAIO's partners include BlackRock, Hamilton Lane, and Brevan Howard, demonstrating the system is live with some of traditional finance's largest players.
"With over $5 billion under management and significant token positions across the portfolio, we know firsthand that one of the biggest challenges at this scale is avoiding signaling risk when moving allocations to exchanges or executing OTC," said Paul Veradittakit, managing partner at Pantera Capital, an investor in Zama.
Zama, which raised $57 million in a Series B round in June 2025, is also using the FHE-powered system to manage its own ZAMA token distributions on Ethereum. Post-acquisition, TokenOps will continue to operate as an independent brand while extending its new confidential lifecycle tools to a wider range of token issuers.
"Privacy was the number one demand we could not meet with transparent infrastructure," said Fabio Mancini, co-founder and CEO of TokenOps. "The pipeline for confidential finance is ready to scale."
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
