ZKnon — A Coupon-Based Privacy Layer for Solana

Public blockchains expose every transfer by design. This is powerful for transparency but dangerous for users who do not want their entire financial history to be permanently public. Traders, founders, investors, and everyday users often need private flows that are not trivial to link on-chain.

ZKnon is a live Solana privacy project launched on pump.fun, with its contract already deployed at FL3rDdLs4Vf1FtssnXTTztcMrY2cXZcK8bi5Fg2Npump. Instead of sending SOL directly from one wallet to another, ZKnon introduces a coupon-based abstraction built on top of a shared liquidity pool. Coupons represent private claims on the pool and are the main interface for users.

The mission is bigger than a single “private transfer” feature. ZKnon aims to become a full privacy layer and product ecosystem on Solana: private transfers, salary flows, OTC tools, privacy-native launchpad features, analytics, and dev tools — all anchored by a zk-friendly core architecture.

The roadmap is organized in days and weeks (not months or years), so the community can clearly track progress from today’s live deployment into a more advanced ZKnon protocol with multiple apps and utilities.

1.1 Motivation

On Solana, everything moves fast — including your transaction history. Once a wallet is linked to a person or a team, every deposit, every trade, every experiment is visible forever. This creates real problems:

• Salary and grant payments expose private income details.
• Strategies can be copied by simply watching a single wallet.
• Founders and whales can be tracked and targeted by bots.
• OTC flows and deals become easy to map.

ZKnon exists to give users a practical way to route value through a privacy layer — with a clear path to zero-knowledge protection and multiple products for real usage.

1.2 Design goals

• Start with a live contract
  The token and pool contract are already launched through pump.fun. The roadmap starts from this reality, not from theory.
• Coupons, not raw addresses
  Users interact with coupons that represent private balances, not just public wallet addresses.
• Multiple products, one privacy core
  Private transfers are the first use case. Over time, ZKnon will power additional apps: payroll, private airdrops, OTC utilities, and tools for other projects.
• ZK-ready from day one
  The architecture is designed to adopt zk circuits, commitments, and nullifiers without breaking the UI.

2.1 Core components

2.2 Coupon abstraction

In ZKnon, a coupon is a user-facing note that internally tracks:

• The initial deposit amount linked to the pool.
• The remaining value after partial withdrawals.
• Labels and metadata: “salary”, “trading stack”, “OTC funds”, etc.
• In zk phases: a commitment and one or more nullifiers.

3.1 Client & wallet layer

The dApp is built around Phantom and the Solana wallet ecosystem:

• Connect / disconnect control for Phantom.
• Balance display for wallet and pool vault.
• Safe handling of deposits and withdrawals.
• Coupon creation, naming, and tracking.

3.2 Coupon & note layer

Today, coupons are primarily a UX and accounting layer. In the upcoming ZK phases, each coupon will map to:

• A secret note key known only to the user.
• A commitment stored in on-chain state.
• Nullifiers used to prevent double-spends.

3.3 Pool contract

The live pool contract at FL3rDdLs4Vf1FtssnXTTztcMrY2cXZcK8bi5Fg2Npump holds funds and supports deposit/withdraw behavior. Over time, the contract will be upgraded or wrapped to:

• Store commitments for zk notes.
• Verify proofs and nullifiers for withdrawals.
• Support different denominations and asset types.

3.4 Proof & relayer layer

ZKnon’s roadmap includes a proof and relayer layer:

• Circuits to prove ownership of notes without revealing wallet addresses.
• Relayers that receive proof + instructions and send withdrawals from their own addresses to recipients.
• Optional fee markets for relayers to compete on speed and quality.

3.5 Data & storage model

4.1 Deposit flow

• User connects Phantom to the ZKnon dApp.
• User generates a new coupon and selects an amount.
• The dApp sends SOL from the user wallet to the ZKnon core pool contract.
• The backend and client link the deposit to the coupon and update the dashboard.

4.2 Coupon management

Coupons are central to the user experience:

• Create multiple coupons with different labels and purposes.
• Partially withdraw from a coupon while keeping the remainder.
• In the future, export encrypted coupons and restore them on a new device.

4.3 Withdrawal flow (current and future)

• The user selects a coupon and chooses a withdrawal amount.
• Today, the withdrawal is coordinated by the backend and executed by the pool contract as a normal transfer from the pool.
• In the zk version, the user (or backend) generates a proof and a nullifier; the pool verifies it and sends funds to the recipient.
• Relayers can be added so that the withdraw comes from a relayer wallet instead of a fixed pool address, increasing privacy.

4.4 Beyond transfers: ZKnon apps

ZKnon is designed to power several app types on top of the core privacy layer:

• ZKnon Pay — private salary and grant payouts using coupons.
• ZKnon OTC — tools for OTC desks to move liquidity without revealing all counterparties.
• ZKnon Airdrop — privacy-aware airdrops where the claim side is unlinkable to the distribution wallet.
• ZKnon Analytics — privacy-friendly statistics for pool health and usage, without exposing user addresses.

5.1 Threat model

ZKnon focuses on making it difficult to link deposits and withdrawals on-chain, and on avoiding simple address clustering. The protocol does not solve all global surveillance problems, but it does aim to break the most common and “cheap” analysis methods.

5.2 Techniques

• Shared pool to blur direct “A → B” transfers.
• Coupon abstraction to separate user identity from withdrawals.
• Delayed or batched withdrawals to hide timing correlations.
• Future zk circuits and nullifiers to mathematically remove the need for linking notes to addresses.

5.3 Limitations

• The live system is a privacy-enhanced mixer prototype, not yet a fully audited zk mixer.
• Very small pool size or extreme behavior (e.g., depositing and withdrawing the same unique amount at the same second) can still be tracked by strong adversaries.
• Off-chain tracking (IP, browser fingerprint, compromised devices) is outside the protocol’s control.

ZKnon is structured as a protocol and a product family. The live token and pool contract form the foundation, while future utilities grow around them:

• Fees on withdrawals and advanced privacy features.
• Relayer rewards for pushing anonymized withdrawals on-chain.
• Optional governance mechanisms to steer parameters and approve new product modules.

Over time, the project will host multiple products:

• ZKnon Core — the main privacy pool and coupon logic.
• ZKnon Apps — interfaces for salaries, OTC, airdrops, and B2B flows.
• ZKnon Dev — SDKs, APIs, and examples for integrating ZKnon into other Solana projects.
• ZKnon Explore — a privacy-aware dashboard that shows pool status and anonymity metrics instead of raw addresses.

7.1 Day 0 — Current live state

The project is already live on Solana, launched via pump.fun. Today (Day 0) the status is:

• Token minted and traded on pump.fun.
• Core pool contract deployed at FL3rDdLs4Vf1FtssnXTTztcMrY2cXZcK8bi5Fg2Npump.
• Frontend dApp and simple backend coordinating deposits and withdrawals.
• Basic activity logging and Phantom integration working in production.

7.2 Day 1–3 — Stabilize launch & core UX

7.3 Day 4–7 — Coupon dashboard & basic history

7.4 Week 2–3 — Mixer engine & privacy hardening

7.5 Week 4–6 — ZK prototype & dev tooling

7.6 Week 7+ — Ecosystem building & full ZK rollout

7.7 Roadmap snapshot (days & weeks)

8.1 Governance principles

Because ZKnon is already live and evolving quickly, governance needs to be practical and focused on protocol safety:

• Transparent communication around upgrades and changes.
• Community-visible roadmap with clear day/week milestones (like the ones in this document).
• In the future, on-chain controls for key parameters and relayer registration.

8.2 Conclusion

ZKnon is already on-chain. The contract is live, the token is trading on pump.fun, and users can interact with the first version of the privacy pool. From here, the plan is clear and aggressive in terms of pace: stabilize within days, expand features and coupon logic within the first weeks, and push zk circuits, relayers, and new apps as quickly as they become safe and usable.

The long-term vision is simple but ambitious: when someone on Solana thinks about privacy, they think “ZKnon” — not only as a single dApp, but as an entire family of tools and primitives that make private finance and private on-chain operations normal.