Unlocking the Next Phase of Scalable Onchain Confidentiality
Zama, the cryptography company behind the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol, today announced that it has acquired KKRT Labs, a pioneering research and development firm focused on scaling blockchains using Zero-Knowledge Proofs. This strategic acquisition strengthens Zama’s technical depth in blockchain scalability and validity (ZK) rollups, while accelerating its ability to deliver high-performance confidentiality to all public blockchains.
KKRT Labs, also known as “Kakarot,” brings deep expertise in designing high-performance proving architectures and modular rollup systems for Ethereum-equivalent environments. Backed by investors such as Vitalik Buterin, Starkware, Lambda Class, and Stake Capital, Kakarot is recognized as one of the strongest ZK-rollup teams in the ecosystem, aiming at building the most scalable, efficient proving engine for Ethereum-compatible chains.
By joining forces, Zama and KKRT Labs will accelerate scalability efforts across the Zama Protocol, targeting 10,000+ confidential transactions per second on public chains such as Ethereum, Solana, and others. This new scale will open up critical financial applications on-chain, such as confidential stablecoin payments, confidential DeFi, or confidential on-chain asset management.
“KKRT Labs has assembled one of the best ZK-rollup teams in the world,” said Rand Hindi, CEO at Zama. “Together, we will scale faster and reach new levels of performance, bringing the Zama Protocol to tens of thousands of transactions per second.”
Integration, Growth, and Future Roadmap
Beyond technical alignment, Zama and KKRT Labs share a common philosophy: a belief in open-source innovation, confidentiality-first infrastructure, and democratizing access to advanced cryptographic technology. Both teams have been driven by the conviction that scalability and confidentiality are not trade-offs, but complementary building blocks for the next generation of decentralized systems.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum and KKRT Labs investor, said: “Kakarot has played a significant role in advancing the state of cryptographic technologies in Ethereum, from their early pioneering work on ZK-EVMs to their work on client-side proving for privacy preservation. I look forward to seeing what the team’s talented researchers and developers will do next.”
Zama is committed to ensuring a seamless integration of KKRT Labs:
- •Team retention & leadership: KKRT’s key engineers, operations, and leadership will transition fully into Zama.
- •Roadmap alignment: KKRT’s ongoing initiatives will be integrated into Zama’s broader product and engineering roadmap with minimal disruption.
Eli Ben Sasson, co-founder of ZCash and CEO of StarkWare, said: “I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with the exceptional Kakarot team over the years and witnessing firsthand what they can build. They’ve achieved tremendous success by taking a simple PoC from some of our engineers three years ago and turning it into impressive technology. They have a deep understanding of what it takes to scale blockchains using advanced cryptography, and I’m thrilled to see them dedicating their expertise to scaling and privacy. I’m sure they will provide pivotal support to Zama’s ambitious scaling roadmap.”
“Joining Zama allows us to bring our expertise towards scaling one of the last major challenges in blockchain: confidentiality.” added Clément Walter, co-founder, KKRT Labs. “We’ve always believed scalability and confidentiality are essential to the adoption of blockchains, and by joining forces with Zama we can finally make high-throughput, low latency confidential on-chain finance a reality.”
About Zama
Zama is a cryptography company building state-of-the-art FHE solutions for blockchain. Their flagship protocol, the Zama Protocol, adds a layer of confidentiality to existing chains such as Ethereum and Solana, enabling confidential payment, DeFi and more. Zama was founded by Dr. Pascal Paillier (FHE pioneer) and Dr. Rand Hindi (exited AI founder), has the largest research team in FHE, and raised $150m at a $1.2b valuation from Multicoin, Pantera, Protocol Labs, and others. To learn more about Zama, users can visit https://zama.org/.
About KKRT Labs
KKRT Labs was a zero-knowledge R&D company focused on building modular proving engines for Ethereum-equivalent systems. Founded by experts in cryptography and blockchain architecture, KKRT Labs had an aim to make verifiable computing simple, fast, and accessible.