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Zama

ZAMA · Field entry
PrivacyDeFiPrivacy

A confidentiality layer letting public-chain smart contracts compute on encrypted data

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$0.07473.12%Snapshot · October 20, 2026 · updates live
Market cap
$190.45M
24h volume
$9.05M
Rank
#189
Circulating
2.55B ZAMA
Max supply
No fixed cap
All-time high
$0.1074 September 23, 2026

ZAMA price chart

7-day snapshot. Chart data from CoinGecko.

What is Zama?

Zama is a protocol that adds confidentiality to existing public blockchains using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), a kind of encryption that lets computers work on data without decrypting it. Its first use is confidential tokens on Ethereum, which hide balances and transfer amounts. ZAMA is the token used to pay protocol fees and to stake with the operators who run it.

Utility Lens

What Zama actually does

Lets apps on public blockchains keep balances, amounts and other data encrypted while smart contracts still compute on them.

Real-world usage
earlyThe mainnet and confidential token wrappers are live and holding real deposits, but the product is less than a year old.
Token necessity
integralZAMA pays protocol fees and secures operators through staking, but fees can be paid by apps or relayers on users' behalf.
Decentralization
limitedA fixed set of 13 key-management operators and 5 coprocessors run the protocol, Zama itself runs the coprocessor and relayer, and L2BEAT reports that governance multisigs can upgrade contracts instantly.
Track record
newMainnet launched at the end of December 2025 and the token began trading in early 2026. In late May 2026 a US court order in a civil case Zama was not part of led Circle to freeze the USDC held in Zama's cUSDC wrapper, and the same court lifted the freeze on June 1.

How we rate

What it’s used for

The main live use is confidential versions of tokens on Ethereum: you wrap a stablecoin such as USDC into a confidential version, send it with the amount hidden, and unwrap it later. Zama used its own system to run its January 2026 token auction with encrypted bids. App developers or relayers can pay the fees, so end users may never need to hold ZAMA.

Role of the ZAMA token:

gasstaking securitygovernance

Evidence of real use

Privacy: what’s hidden, what isn’t

Privacy model
app-level
What it hides
Token balances and transfer amounts in confidential tokens, and any other contract data an app chooses to encrypt, such as bids or votes.
What stays visible
Who pays whom, the addresses involved, timing, and the amounts of every wrap and unwrap between a public token and its confidential version.
Reality check
Zama hides amounts, not identities, and it relies on a committee of known operators to guard the decryption key rather than on math alone. Apps can grant auditors or regulators decryption rights, and operators can blacklist sanctioned addresses, so it is built for compliant confidentiality rather than anonymity.

Privacy coins, explained

How Zama works

Fully homomorphic encryption lets a computer add, compare or otherwise process encrypted numbers and get an encrypted result, without ever seeing the real values. Ethereum cannot run that math directly, so Zama uses a trick: when a smart contract asks for an encrypted operation, the host chain records a placeholder and an off-chain network of coprocessors does the heavy computation. The project says anyone can recompute those results to check them.

All encrypted data sits under one shared public key. The matching secret key is split among 13 operators in a key management service (KMS) using multi-party computation, so no single party holds it. Only the rules written into each smart contract decide who may decrypt which value, which lets an app give a user, an auditor or a regulator selective access. Zama names operators such as Ledger, Fireblocks, Figment and Etherscan among its launch set.

ZAMA pays for three things: verifying encrypted inputs, decrypting results and moving encrypted values between chains. Fees are priced in US dollars but paid in ZAMA, and apps or relayers can cover them so end users never touch the token. The litepaper says every fee is burned, while fresh tokens are minted to reward the operators who stake. Zama plans to expand to other EVM chains and to Solana over time.

Key moments

  1. 2020Rand Hindi and Pascal Paillier found Zama to make fully homomorphic encryption practical.
  2. 2025The first public testnet opens on July 1, and mainnet goes live on Ethereum on December 30.
  3. 2026A sealed-bid auction in January sells 8% of supply, ZAMA begins trading, and Uphold adds it in June.

Supply

Coinbase lists a total supply of 11 billion ZAMA and no maximum supply. The protocol uses a burn-and-mint design: 100% of protocol fees are burned, and new tokens are minted to reward staked operators at an initial 5% annual inflation rate that governance can change. The litepaper says 20% of supply circulated at launch, with the rest subject to lockups.

Risks to understand

  • Privacy depends on the operator committee: L2BEAT reports that any 5 of the 13 KMS operators acting together could decrypt every amount.
  • L2BEAT also reports that governance multisigs can upgrade every contract instantly, so users trust Zama and its partners not to make harmful changes.
  • Any single operator can pause the protocol or blacklist addresses in an emergency, and the issuer of a wrapped asset can freeze it too: in May 2026 a court order led Circle to freeze the USDC behind cUSDC for a few days.
  • FHE is new in production, and its performance and security under heavy use are still being tested.
  • There is no hard cap, so token supply grows if staking rewards outpace burned fees.

Zama FAQ

Is Zama a privacy coin?

Not exactly. ZAMA is the fee and staking token for a confidentiality protocol; the privacy applies to apps and tokens built on it, and it hides amounts rather than who is transacting.

What is fully homomorphic encryption?

It is encryption that lets a computer run calculations on data while it stays encrypted, so the operator never sees the underlying numbers.

Do I need ZAMA to send a confidential token?

Not always. The litepaper says fees can be paid by the user, the app or a relayer, so some apps cover them for you.

Sources

  1. Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol litepaper — Zama
  2. Understanding Zama: a comprehensive overview — Messari
  3. Zama Confidential Tokens privacy review — L2BEAT
  4. ERC-7984: the confidential token standard explained — Zama
  5. Zama (ZAMA) is now available to trade on Uphold — Uphold
  6. Zama price page — Coinbase
  7. Where is Kraken licensed or regulated? — Kraken
  8. Statement on the court-ordered cUSDC freeze — Rand Hindi, Zama CEO (X)

Last reviewed October 20, 2026. Written by . Utility Lens ratings are editorial judgments, not investment advice. Market data from CoinGecko. Spot an error? Request a correction.

About the author

Dave McNaught has worked in IT since 1999 and founded All Business Technologies (ABT) in 2003, a Boston-area firm providing Managed IT, Cybersecurity, Managed AI, Web Design and App Development. He publishes The Crypto Guide.

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