March 1st, 2025 marked a major milestone for the Privacy Pools protocol: the successful conclusion of our Trusted Setup Ceremony.

Over the course of the event, over 500 contributors from all around the crypto ecosystem came together to help securely generate the cryptographic parameters that will underpin the next generation of privacy-preserving infrastructure. We're proud to share that the ceremony is now finalized, and all contributions have been processed and verified.

The finalized ZKey is publicly available for download, and we encourage everyone to verify the parameters independently. By distributing trust across participants and merging all contributions, we have increased the resilience of Privacy Pools against any single point of failure.

The ceremony brought together hundreds of ETH Nerds to collaboratively generate parameters for two circuits at the core of Privacy Pools; the Exit circuit and the Private Withdrawal circuit. These circuits enable different ways of withdrawing assets from the protocol, each with distinct privacy and compliance properties.

Two Circuits, Two Paths to Withdraw

The Exit circuit is the simplest withdrawal mechanism. It allows a user to prove ownership of a commitment (a prior deposit), and withdraw the full amount back to their original deposit address. This is a non-anonymous path used to reclaim funds without engaging the protocol’s privacy features.

The Private Withdrawal circuit is where the privacy magic happens. This circuit allows a user to:

1. Prove ownership of a previously deposited commitment,
   Demonstrate that the commitment is on the current whitelist (i.e., not linked to known bad actors),

2. Withdraw a portion of the funds privately, and

3. Roll the remaining funds into a new anonymous commitment.

This selective withdrawal approach lets users preserve both privacy and compliance: you can dissociate your identity from the withdrawal while proving your deposit was legitimate.

This ceremony completes the cryptographic foundation of Privacy Pools. With these zKeys, we’re now moving toward production deployment of the withdrawal circuits, enabling private, compliant asset flows that give users control and regulators confidence.

To everyone who participated in the ceremony: thank you. Your contributions helped build a privacy-preserving financial future.