Vitalik Buterin · Ethereum · OpenAI · The Block
The Foundation built zkAPI with the Open Anonymity (OA) Project, an open-source AI privacy effort
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 2 sources. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◎ Multiple-sources
"Every AI API call today carries an identity," the post said.
Key facts
- ZkAPI implements "ZK API Usage Credits," a design Davide Crapis and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published on the Ethereum Research forum on Feb. 11
- Crapis leads the Ethereum Foundation's dAI team, which the Foundation formed in September 2025 to improve Ethereum's capabilities as a settlement and coordination layer for AI
- The Foundation built zkAPI with the Open Anonymity (OA) Project, an open-source AI privacy effort, and it is live on Ethereum mainnet, the Foundation said in a blog post
- It's like a generalization of OA unlinkable inference that also abstracts payments away," Ken Liu, a Stanford computer science PhD candidate who works on the Open Anonymity Project, said in an X
Summary
The Ethereum Foundation on Thursday launched zkAPI, a system that lets users pay for AI models and other metered APIs without revealing who they are, according to a blog post published Thursday. The Foundation built zkAPI with the Open Anonymity (OA) Project, an open-source AI privacy effort, and it is live on Ethereum mainnet, the Foundation said in a blog post. "It's like a generalization of OA unlinkable inference that also abstracts payments away," Ken Liu, a Stanford computer science PhD candidate who works on the Open Anonymity Project, said in an X post on Thursday afternoon. To use zkAPI, users must first deposit tokens such as ETH (ETH) or USDC into a vault contract on Ethereum, which records the user's balance as a private note, according to the post.