Introducing 0VM: The Infrastructure That Makes Global Privacy Possible on Ethereum

October 27, 2025

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The demand for privacy is on the rise, but privacy on Ethereum is still not upto the mark and has been struggling for a long time with actors like ZachXBT decrypting random privacy protocol txs in 5 mins while ordering coconut water while resting in the balcony of our sweet cheery infinite garden.

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OGs know the reason for this and most people acknowledge this reality. 

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To summarize there are two reasons for it:

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1. People don’t treat privacy protocols as “home” but more so as “mixers”. Yeah, sorry but the reality is that even fully replicated zerocash based privacy protocols on ETH still act as mixers, not because people can't actually transfer between one another confidentiality + anonymously within the framework, but because they can't transfer to someone who isn't registered within the privacy protocol to begin with, which limits “domain expansion”. Almost nullifying the reason to build a privacy protocol. Which ends up creating isolated islands of privacy so instead of users, staying within the privacy protocol, interacting within the “ecosystem of that privacy protocol” (nonexistant rn btw) and never choosing to leave. (yea yea this is our ghost layer, the world's first secure value transfer layer built with novel constructs based on EZEE ~ enabling “Domain expansion” and helping us create an ecosystem of privacy preserving applications ~ for the first time bla bla ; but yeah no this article is more about the infrastructure that makes all of this possible and highlight WHY this wasn't doable before)
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2. Drum roll…… yeah another reason is - the way we deal with transactions in blockchains.
   
   While zero-knowledge proofs have enabled confidential transactions and scalable rollups, one bottleneck remains: how do you submit a private transaction anonymously without revealing who you are?
   
   And the answer, up until now, has been deeply flawed. Systems like Tornado Cash rely on relayers—third parties who pay gas on your behalf—but force users to split their transaction value to reimburse them. This breaks down when we want to transfer NFTs, exact-value payments, or operate within the secure value transfer layer ~ as in send payments to ANYONE on the ETH network. Worse, it creates centralized choke points where a handful of relayers control access to privacy.
   
   

Today, we’re proud to announce that 0VM v1 is live on Ethereum mainnet—and with it, a new primitive: Anonymous Verification. And this isn’t just an improvement. It’s the missing infrastructure that finally makes universal, composable, and trustless privacy possible on Ethereum and helps us build and make protocols like the ghost layer possible. 

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What Is 0VM? Also sharing the whitepaper

0VM is a general-purpose zero-knowledge computing layer with two main purpose :

1. Decentralized ZK proving for rollups, zkML, and custom circuits 
2. Anonymous transaction inclusion via Anonymous Verification
   
   

0VM as a full stack architecture is built with the long term goal in mind that it provides ZK apps on ethereum with the necessary infrastructure to create private and scalable apps. Creating a cambrian explosion of ZK protocols on Ethereum.

But its most transformative contribution is in the second. 0VM enables users to pay relayers without revealing their identity—not through economic incentives, but through cryptographic guarantees. It introduces a new concept known as “anonymous verification” that it puts into practice through which it is able to signal to a protocol the ability for a user to make a payment in the future. This in return allows users to process state transactions in the system without paying themselves, while respecting the principles of decentralization in practice. 

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At its core, 0VM introduces a Root Network: a decentralized group of signers using threshold ECDSA (based on Gennaro-Goldfeder 2020). When a user deposits funds into 0VM’s paymaster contract, the Root Network cryptographically verifies their ability to pay—without learning who they are—and issues a signed authorization that any relayer can use to submit the transaction with zero risk of non-payment.
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The link to read the whitepaper is shared at the end of this document.

This is Anonymous Verification: a trustless, decentralized, and privacy-preserving payment guarantee, that helps privacy protocol like silent build systems like Ghost layer, that can have flexible constructs to create  

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Why This Changes Everything

The existing way to relay: Tornado Cash–Style Relaying

In Tornado Cash:

• You deposit 100 USDC → get a note.
• To withdraw privately, you ask a relayer to submit your transaction.
• The relayer takes a fee (e.g., 5 USDC) from your note and sends you 95 USDC.

This works for fungible tokens—but fails completely for:

• NFTs (you can’t send “95% of a CryptoPunk”)
• Exact-value transfers (e.g., paying 100 USDC precisely)
• Sending to unregistered users (no way to split value if they don’t have a Silent account)

Worse, relayers bear gas risk, leading to centralization and censorship.

The 0VM Way: Decoupled, Guaranteed, Universal

0VM decouples payment from payload:

• Users pre-deposit gas funds into a separate paymaster.
• The Root Network verifies balance off-chain and issues a threshold signature.
• Relayers submit the transaction and are reimbursed from the paymaster, not the asset.

This unlocks what was previously impossible when it comes to processing transactions on ethereum, especially those that need privacy, especially anonymity. Critically, Ghost Layer—the world’s first secure value-transfer layer for Ethereum—depends entirely on 0VM. Without Anonymous Verification, features like TransferToNonSilent that would bring the concept of a secure value transfer layer to life would expose user identity or fragment assets. As stated in the EZEE whitepaper (soon to be released)

“Interaction within the ghost layer requires the user to utilize the 0VM in order to uphold and respect the privacy guarantees of the user.”

Developer Timeline: What’s Live, What’s Next

We’re shipping in phases to ensure security and reliability.

v1 (Live Now – Ethereum Mainnet)

• Anonymous Verification fully operational
• Integrated with Ghost Layer (private beta)
• Relayers can participate via the renode layer
• Signers are whitelisted 
• Centralized coordinator 

Currently 0VM is plugged into the Ghost layer and at a future date, would open its interfaces for other ZK applications to use 0VM.

v2 (H1 2027)

• Signers convert into decentralized ZK proving system
• Multi-chain support (Base, Arbitrum, Polygon)
• More details later 

v3 (H2 2027)

• Permissionless Root Network (staking, slashing)
• Encrypted storage + threshold decryption for private data handling
• zkML and private AI inference integrations
  
  

The Bigger Vision: Encrypt Ethereum

0VM is more than a relayer fix. It’s the trustless pipeline that connects private intent to public execution—without compromise. With Ghost Layer providing the confidential ledger and 0VM providing the anonymous transaction layer, Silent Protocol is delivering on its mission: to encrypt Ethereum. Not for a select few. Not in silos. But for everyone—even those who’ve never heard of us. Because privacy shouldn’t be opt-in. It should be universal.

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Access the whitepaper here -> Access the whitepaper here -> Access the whitepaper here -> Access the whitepaper here -> Access the whitepaper here -> Access the whitepaper here ->‍


Shhhhhh

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