Zama Announces Strategic Acquisition of KKRT Labs to Increase Confidentiality of Public Blockchains

[PRESS RELEASE – Paris, France, November 5th, 2025]

Existencethe cryptography company behind the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol, today announced that it has made the acquisition KKRT laboratoriesa pioneering research and development company 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-quality confidentiality to all public blockchains.

Unlocking the next phase of scalable onchain confidentiality

KKRT Labs (also known as “Kakarot”) brings deep expertise in designing high-performance test 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, focused on building the most scalable, efficient testing engine for Ethereum-compatible chains.

By joining forces, Zama and KKRT Labs will accelerate scalability efforts within the Zama Protocol, targeting more than 10,000 confidential transactions per second on public chains such as Ethereum, Solana and others. This new scale will enable critical on-chain financial applications such as confidential stablecoin payments, confidential DeFi, or confidential on-chain asset management.

“KKRT Labs has built one of the best ZK rollup teams in the world,” said Edge noCEO at Zama. “Together we will scale faster and achieve new levels of performance, helping Zama Protocol reach 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 are driven by the belief that scalability and confidentiality are not compromises, but complementary building blocks for the next generation of decentralized systems.

Vitalik Buterineco-founder of Ethereum and KKRT Labs investor, said: “Kakarot has been instrumental in advancing the state of cryptographic technologies in Ethereum, from their early pioneering work on ZK-EVMs to their work on client-side proofs for privacy preservation. I look forward to seeing what the team’s talented researchers and developers do next.”

Zama aims for seamless integration of KKRT Labs:

• Team retention and leadership: KKRT’s key engineers, operations and leadership will transition fully to Zama.
• Route map alignment: KKRT’s ongoing initiatives will be integrated into Zama’s broader product and engineering roadmap with minimal disruption.

Eli Ben Sassonco-founder of ZCash and CEO of StarkWare, said: “I’ve had the privilege of working 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 excited to see them continue their dedicating expertise to scaling and privacy, I am confident they will provide critical support to Zama’s ambitious scale planning.”

“By joining Zama, we can leverage our expertise to scale one of the last major challenges in blockchain: confidentiality.” added Clemens Walterco-founder, KKRT Labs. “We have always believed that scalability and confidentiality are essential to blockchain adoption, and by joining forces with Zama we can finally make confidential on-chain financing with high throughput and low latency a reality.”

About Zama

Existence is a cryptography company that builds state-of-the-art FHE solutions for blockchain. Their flagship protocol, the Zama Protocol, adds a layer of confidentiality to existing chains like Ethereum and Solana, enabling confidential payment, DeFi, and more. Zama was founded by Dr. Pascal Paillier (FHE pioneer) and Dr. Rand Hindi (exit AI founder), has the largest research team in FHE and has raised $150 million at a $1.2 billion valuation from Multicoin, Pantera, Protocol Labs and others. For more information about Zama, users can visit https://zama.org/.

About KKRT Labs

KKRT laboratories was a zero-knowledge R&D company focused on building modular test engines for Ethereum-equivalent systems. Founded by experts in cryptography and blockchain architecture, KKRT Labs aimed to make verifiable computing simple, fast, and accessible.