Paris, France - Zama announced a strategic collaboration with Elliptic to bring blockchain intelligence into confidential financial applications running on public blockchains. The agreement will see Elliptic provide wallet risk screening for confidential vaults enabled by Zama, while operating within the confidentiality constraints that underpin Zama's technology.
The partnership addresses a core challenge for institutions moving from pilot projects to live blockchain usage: how to combine financial confidentiality with the compliance controls required in regulated markets. Zama positions these needs as complementary rather than mutually exclusive and describes the joint effort as a step toward delivering confidential financial infrastructure that meets institutional expectations.
How the integration will work
As the initial phase of the collaboration, Elliptic will run wallet screening - commonly described as Know Your Transaction (KYT) checks - on addresses interacting with confidential vaults supported by Zama. According to the companies, the implementation is designed so that Elliptic assesses address-level risk without receiving encrypted balances, transaction amounts or other user-sensitive information. The firms say this approach preserves the confidentiality guarantees that are central to Zama's protocol while allowing institutions to apply established compliance workflows.
Zama built its confidentiality protocol with the premise that privacy and responsible risk management must advance together. The firm states that protecting sensitive financial details should not undermine efforts to detect and deter illicit activity. Embedding compliance controls into its products from the outset is, in Zama's view, essential to enabling institutions to adopt confidential finance with confidence.
"Institutional adoption depends on trust," said Rand Hindi, CEO and Co-founder of Zama. "Financial institutions shouldn’t have to choose between protecting sensitive financial information and meeting compliance obligations. Confidential finance must deliver both. Our collaboration with Elliptic is an important step toward making compliant confidential finance a reality for institutions building on public blockchains."
Elliptic, described in the announcement as a global leader in blockchain intelligence, supports more than 700 institutions and analyzes more than 90 million dollars in digital asset activity every day. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Washington D.C., Miami, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.
"For institutions to move real financial activity onto public blockchains, confidentiality and compliance have to work together rather than against each other. Zama is building confidential finance with compliance in scope from the start, and we are glad to support that by screening wallets for risk before a transaction proceeds. It is a model for how confidential finance can meet the standards regulated markets expect," said Jackson Hull, CTO and COO at Elliptic.
Confidentiality boundaries and operational design
The companies say the integration is structured around strict confidentiality boundaries. Elliptic will perform KYT on addresses and will not require other confidential user information, enabling regulated entities to retain visibility on wallet-level risk without exposure to encrypted transaction details. Zama implements a confidentiality layer built on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which the protocol uses to enable confidential applications on public blockchains while preserving composability, decentralization and security.
Both firms frame this initial deployment as a demonstration of how confidential finance can be compliant by design. Zama also stated it will continue to engage with other infrastructure providers to help develop the technologies, operational models and industry standards that, in its view, will be necessary for broader institutional adoption of confidential finance.
Implications for institutions and market infrastructure
For financial institutions weighing public blockchain adoption, the integration signals a possible path to reconcile regulatory obligations with privacy requirements. By enabling wallet risk screening without disclosing encrypted balances or transaction amounts, the collaboration aims to allow institutions to apply compliance controls comparable to those expected in regulated markets while retaining confidentiality for sensitive financial information.
Company descriptions and contacts
Zama is described in the announcement as a rapidly growing confidentiality protocol for onchain finance. Its open source protocol leverages FHE to build a confidentiality layer for public blockchains, enabling developers, financial institutions and enterprises to construct confidential applications without sacrificing composability, decentralization or security. Additional information is available at www.zama.org.
Elliptic is presented as a leader in digital asset decisioning, with a platform designed to extract cryptoasset data and intelligence across blockchains. The announcement emphasizes the platform's uptime, scalability and breadth of data and intelligence as reasons organizations choose Elliptic for compliance, risk management, intelligence operations and blockchain infrastructure needs. More information can be found at www.elliptic.co.
For media inquiries, the announcement lists Julia André, PR & Communications Director at Zama, and the contact email [email protected].
Summary
Zama and Elliptic have entered a partnership to integrate blockchain intelligence with confidential financial applications on public blockchains. Elliptic will perform wallet-level KYT screening for Zama's confidential vaults while operating within confidentiality constraints that prevent the exposure of encrypted balances or transaction amounts. The collaboration is positioned as a model for compliant confidential finance aimed at institutional users.
Key points
- Zama will incorporate Elliptic's wallet risk screening into its confidential vaults while preserving encrypted transactional data.
- The integration emphasizes compliance by design for confidential finance, seeking to meet regulatory expectations without compromising confidentiality.
- Sectors impacted include institutional finance, blockchain infrastructure providers and compliance and risk teams within regulated markets.
Risks and uncertainties
- Operational and industry standards for confidential finance are still evolving; institutions and infrastructure providers will need to develop common operational models and standards as adoption grows.
- Maintaining confidentiality while enabling effective compliance relies on strict technical boundaries and third-party integrations; implementation complexity and reliance on external intelligence providers could present operational risks for institutions.
- As confidential finance matures, continued collaboration across infrastructure providers will be necessary to balance privacy and regulatory expectations, creating uncertainty about the pace and form of industry standards.
Disclosure
Priya Menon is the reporter for this article. Priya is an industrials analyst specializing in aerospace, defense, and machinery with a background in operations and supply chain, including multi-tier vendor risk and backlog conversion.