EthSystems

Building confidential systems for institutional Ethereum

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Today we're launching EthSystems.

We build confidential systems for institutional Ethereum.

Institutions want to use Ethereum, but one of the biggest problems is the lack of built-in, modular privacy tools.

We were the Ethereum Foundation's Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF) for the past year. We had hundreds of conversations with central banks, regulators, tier-one banks, and asset managers, shipping open source work the whole time.

Wall Street has found crypto as an asset class, but not yet as commercial infrastructure. Institutions want to run real flows on Ethereum: stablecoins, tokenized assets, settlement. These are businesses with billions of dollars on the line, and no bank will operate in full public view. On a public ledger, confidentiality is the hard part: each party to a transaction should see what it has a right to see, and nothing more.

We have a year of proof of work: private bonds, confidential stablecoin transfers, private settlement across chains, the Ethereum Privacy Map, and more. All with protocol specs and security properties, at our website.

We've spent a decade working on privacy in crypto. We know there's no silver bullet. Different use cases need different systems, each designed, specified, and hardened properly, and someone has to do that work. That's why EthSystems exists.

We're an independent, for-profit company, backed by long-term Ethereum-aligned investors. This is a decade-long transition, and we aren't going anywhere.

If you're an institution that wants to build on Ethereum, talk to us. We're hiring: BD in New York, protocol engineers, ops: [email protected]

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

9/ October in one line: a shielded pool checked from spec to bytecode, a private money market fund starter kit, a write-up on Glamsterdam and Hegotá, and talks in Seoul, Singapore and New York.

The Ethereum Privacy Map is what we work from, and it takes pull requests. Six use cases that we'd love to have more input from the community: private oracles, registry, supply chain, messaging, procurement and read. If one of those is your area, CONTRIBUTING.md shows how to start. If you're inside an institution, use it.

https://t.co/6WzUyw1HoP

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Our October community update starts with formal verification. We took our shielded pool from the written spec down to the bytecode running on Sepolia and checked each layer with its own tool. No double spend and value conservation are now machine-checked theorems in Lean, and the deployed runtime codes match a fresh build byte for byte. We found six issues on the way, three of them in the verification tools themselves.

Also this month: a private money market fund starter kit, a write-up on the next two Ethereum forks, and the team in Seoul, Singapore and New York.

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

8/ @liftlines joined the Building Ethereum panel at @lfdecentralized's Privacy for Financial Services Workshop in New York on 23 October. He brought the map: use cases with the requirements institutions named, the approaches ruled out, and starter kits for several.
Thanks to LFDT for the invitation.
https://t.co/3F6NbpkKZJ

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Kaushal Vyas (@liftlines ), our Managing Director, joins the Building Ethereum panel at @LFDecentralized's Privacy for Financial Services Workshop in New York on Friday 23 October (12:00 to 12:45 pm ET), moderated by Johnna Powell of DTCC.

He will bring our open map of institutional privacy use cases, each with the requirements institutions named, the approaches already ruled out, and starter kits for several of them.

Looking forward to the conversation with fellow panelists, and to building on it together after 🤝🏻

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Our Managing Director Kaushal (@liftlines) joins "Staking Economics and the Market for Block Space" panel on 13 November.

As block space markets change where validator revenue comes from, staking yield and its risks shift too. Kaushal brings years of experience in finance and building on Ethereum. Looking forward to the exchange.

[Stable Summit 🦫 @stable_summit]

How are block space markets changing where validator revenue comes from, and what do new revenue sources mean for staking yield and the risks holders take on?

How are institutional stakers and liquid staking providers responding to these shifts, and how is the economics of block space reshaping competition between operators?

On stage:
Kaushal Vyas, EthSystems
@Kean_Gilbert, @LidoFinance
Yuki Kishi, @BitMNR
@KamBenbrik, @Bitwise

Moderator:
Krzysztof Urbanski, L2BEAT (@ethbeat_org)

Secure your spot: https://t.co/wWbpPtVel6

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

We're co-hosting a closed, invite-only session with @Nethermind in Singapore on 18 Nov, during SFF week.

Looking forward to working through one question with them and a group of banks: how do you design compliant infrastructure for regulated finance on Ethereum?

DMs are open.

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

At Hong Kong FinTech Week, @oskarth was on a panel with Euroclear, the BIS Innovation Hub, CAT Investigators and Elephants Inc about why institutional tokenization keeps getting stuck in pilots.

A pilot can live with a public ledger. A portfolio can’t. And a tokenized bond can outlive the cryptography it was issued under, so issuers need to plan for quantum migration too.

If you’re working on confidentiality or post-quantum migration for long-lived assets, we’d like to compare notes 📝

#HKFTW26

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Each lunchbox that a dabbawala carries is routed by a code. The food stays hidden, but the package still says where it's going.

On 4 Nov at ETHIndia, @_rymnc uses that to explain what privacy on Ethereum needs to get right. If you’re in Mumbai, come by!

[ETHIndia @ETHIndiaco]

The engineer who spent years working in and around Ethereum, is explaining it with Mumbai’s dabbawalas.

@_rymnc, Director of Engineering at @eth_systems, was part of the Ethereum Foundation’s Institutional Privacy Task Force before the team spun out as EthSystems this year.

He’s taking the stage on The Lid Leaks: what Mumbai’s dabbawalas teach us about private finance. A system the whole city trusts, used to explain what privacy on Ethereum needs to get right.

4 Nov · Mumbai, inside Devcon

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Engineering Lead at EthSystems, @_rymnc will be presenting our open source work, as well as speaking about what we've learnt while working with institutions.

Meet us at @EFDevcon and @ETHIndiaco!

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Privacy is one of the main things standing between regulated institutions and Ethereum.

On November 3, our CTO and co-founder @oskarth takes that on at the Devcon Hong Kong satellite venue.

Our map of use cases and starter kits is open source. Come to the talk, then help us build it out.

[ETHTAO @Ethtao_Ethtao]

🎉 嘉宾公布｜EthSystems 专题分享

👏 欢迎 Oskar Thoren（Co-founder & CTO of EthSystems）@oskarth 加入 Devcon 香港分会场！

Oskar 将带来 EthSystems 专题分享，围绕以太坊生态的技术发展与创新实践，分享前沿洞察与行业思考。

📅 November 3
📍 Devcon香港分会场
🎟️ 立即报名： https://t.co/jC6I2nnYYC

期待现场与大家交流！🚀

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

What we still assume is written down next to what it limits: the hash has no collisions, the verifier rejects false proofs, and the contract behaves like the model.

If you build systems that hold other people's money on Ethereum, we think this is how to do it: a spec with a guarantees table, proofs where the tools reach, and plain statements of the rest.

Everything is open, and we'd like to work with you.
https://t.co/WJdHRc5lfg

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

We pushed formal verification through our shielded pool, from the written spec down to the bytecode running on Sepolia.

Each layer got its own tool: Lean for the model, circuits and hash, Halmos and Kontrol for the contract, Aeneas and Verus for the wallet, and byte-for-byte rebuilds for the verifiers and the deployment.

What we proved, what we found and what we still assume, in the thread below.

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Our spec gives each guarantee a level: asserted, tested or machine-checked. No double spend and value conservation are now machine-checked, as Lean theorems over every history the pool's rules accept.

We found six issues. Three were in the verification tools themselves, and two of those could prove False, which means they could prove anything. So check your checker too.

AI agents wrote most of the proofs, and Lean's kernel checked every one.

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

3/ The agent can also freeze, release or seize a note, through a second path in the circuit. On-chain, each looks like any other transfer.

The pool's privacy and the fund's compliance both rest on the same zero-knowledge proof.

The full writeup: https://t.co/55sQUYF9cK

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

Tokenized money market funds on Ethereum publish their shareholder books: every balance, every subscription and redemption.

Our proof of concept hides positions from the public, while the fund's transfer agent still sees all of them.

How it works, and the links, below 👇🏻

[EthSystems @eth_systems]

2/ The fund keeps its token and its compliance rules. A shielded pool holds the token, and each position inside it is an encrypted note.

The proof that creates a note also encrypts it to the transfer agent, and the circuit checks it, so no note escapes the agent's register.