Swap ZAMA at the Best Rate

What is ZAMA?

ZAMA is an ERC-20 on Ethereum, exposed on other chains as a LayerZero OFT, and it powers the Zama Protocol: a confidentiality layer that runs on top of existing blockchains rather than as a new chain. With it, a contract can hold encrypted balances and process encrypted amounts, so tokens, stablecoins and other assets become confidential while staying composable.

The underlying technology is fully homomorphic encryption, which allows computation directly on encrypted data. Zama's mainnet on Ethereum went live in late 2025, and the team demonstrated it with cUSDT, a confidential wrapper over the largest stablecoin.

How ZAMA works

Contracts execute symbolically on the host chain while a network of coprocessors performs the heavy FHE computation off-chain; a separate key management service holds the decryption key as shares split across many nodes, inside secure enclaves, and decrypts only what a contract authorizes. Users pay protocol fees in ZAMA, and every fee is burned.

The network runs on delegated proof of stake with 18 genesis operators: 13 key management nodes and 5 coprocessors, including firms such as Ledger, Fireblocks, Etherscan and LayerZero. Operators stake ZAMA, earn minted rewards at an initial inflation rate of 5 percent a year, and holders can delegate stake to them and share the rewards.

ZAMA supply and tokenomics

The genesis supply is 11 billion ZAMA, with about 20 percent circulating at launch. The public sale took 12 percent: an 8 percent sealed-bid Dutch auction held from 21 to 24 January 2026, plus a 2 percent community sale and a 2 percent fixed-price round at the $0.05 clearing price. The auction drew 11,103 bidders and $118.5 million in committed value, and sale tokens were fully unlocked at claim.

Another 6 percent went to launch campaigns and 2 percent to exchange liquidity, both unlocked, which is how roughly a fifth of the supply circulated from day one. The remaining 80 percent carries lockups: 20 percent to the treasury over two years, 20 percent to the team and 10 percent to growth over four years, 20 percent to venture investors and 10 percent to angels over two years, with one-year cliffs on the team and investor tranches. Supply then moves both ways: fees burn ZAMA while staking rewards mint it.

Who builds ZAMA

Zama, the company behind the protocol, is a cryptography firm founded in 2020 by Rand Hindi and Pascal Paillier. It employs one of the largest research groups in fully homomorphic encryption, with around 90 people and nearly half holding doctorates, and it has raised more than $150 million at a $1.2 billion valuation from investors including Multicoin, Pantera, Blockchange and Protocol Labs.

How ZAMA is governed

Protocol updates take effect when a majority of the operators adopt them, covering software versions, fee levels and new host chains. Any single operator can pause the protocol or blacklist sanctioned addresses in an emergency, but reversing those actions requires several coprocessors. Slashing of misbehaving operators is decided through governance proposals on Aragon, and the protocol has been audited by Trail of Bits and Zenith.

ZAMA risks and considerations

The protocol is young: mainnet arrived in late 2025 and the token in 2026, so its security and economics have a short track record. The genesis operator set is permissioned and chosen by reputation, which concentrates operational control until staking opens the set, and the 5 percent reward inflation can be changed by governance.

FHE computation is far heavier than plain execution, so throughput depends on Zama's performance roadmap. Large team, investor and treasury tranches begin unlocking from 2027, and on chains other than Ethereum the token is a LayerZero bridge representation rather than the original contract.