Ethereum’s zkAPI brings privacy-preserving API payments to mainnet

Ethereum’s zkAPI is now live on mainnet, turning an earlier zero-knowledge API payment proposal into a working implementation for private, prepaid access.

The Ethereum Foundation announced on Thursday that zkAPI, a system built with the Open Anonymity Project to let users pay for AI and other API services without revealing their billing identities, has gone live on Ethereum mainnet.

Users deposit funds into an Ethereum vault, then use zero-knowledge proofs to prove they have enough credit to pay for API requests without revealing which deposits are theirs, according to a post from Vittorio Rivabella, AI coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation’s dAI team.

One of the immediate use cases of the system is paying for the use of AI without linking the payment to a user. zkAPI issues short-lived API keys with predefined spending limits. Prompts are sent directly to the AI provider, while usage is settled separately through the payment layer. The project has also released a local client and software development kit, along with a browser-based AI chat implementation.

Read more