London, UK Nullmask, a zero-knowledge privacy protocol for private transfers and swaps, has processed more than $50 million in private volume since 1 October. The protocol was founded by Toma
London, UK
Nullmask, a zero-knowledge privacy protocol for private transfers and swaps, has processed more than $50 million in private volume since 1 October. The protocol was founded by Tomas Krnak, whose team of Zcash developers built shielded transaction support into Trezor hardware wallets on a Zcash Foundation grant. Nullmask averages about $3 million a day, and its busiest day so far saw roughly $4.5 million move through the pool in 24 hours.
The growth comes as privacy has become the largest narrative in web3. It is what is bringing institutions and large funds on-chain, because they need to move capital without exposing positions, counterparties or strategy to the public. Nullmask gives them that confidentiality while keeping deposits screened and activity auditable for the people who need to see it.
Nullmask has distributed about $1.5 million in ZEC rewards and $1.5 million to $MASK holders, and has burned 2.15% of the $MASK supply. All figures are on-chain and can be verified on Dune and DefiLlama.
The team is now launching Nullmask Points Season One, which goes live on 19 October and runs for 90 days. Points reward one thing: moving money privately. Every withdrawal from the pool earns. Through the Early Adopters Program, activity from before Season One is credited retroactively.
On a public blockchain, every payment, balance and counterparty is permanent and searchable by anyone with your address. Scrutiny is also increasing: since January, exchanges in 75 countries have been collecting transaction data that tax authorities will begin sharing in 2027.
Earlier privacy tools asked users to give something up. That could mean a new wallet, a new seed phrase, hours of setup, or handing funds to a third party mid-transfer. As a result, privacy stayed a niche for technical power users.
Nullmask takes a different approach. Users add it to MetaMask, Rabby, Ledger, Trezor or any wallet that supports a custom network, and connect once. From then on, tokens, native ETH and NFTs can be shielded in a single click, and private transfers complete in under 30 seconds.
No new wallet or seed phrase. Privacy keys are derived deterministically from a signature by the user’s existing wallet, so there is nothing extra to back up.
No custody. Funds never leave the user’s control, and no third party holds them mid-transfer.
Standard signing. Shielded transactions are authorized with a standard EIP-1559 transaction from the user’s own wallet, including hardware wallets.
This used to be impractical. Proving a normal wallet signature inside a zero-knowledge proof once required enormous files and hours of compute. Advances in proof systems have brought that down to a couple of seconds on a laptop or phone.
A privacy pool breaks the direct path between a deposit and a withdrawal, but three clues can still connect them: the address, the amount and the time. Nullmask steers users toward a fresh withdrawal address and standard amounts, such as 500 or 1,000 USDT, so withdrawals blend in with many others.
Time is the last link, because every on-chain withdrawal carries a public timestamp. Nullmask’s Advanced mode addresses this with Wave Batching. Withdrawals are signed and queued, then sent together at a scheduled wave in shuffled order. The timestamp on-chain shows the wave, not the moment the user acted. Users can also split a withdrawal into two to five parts, each with its own amount, address and wave, up to 24 hours ahead.
Fast mode remains available for users who need funds right away. Both modes carry the same 0.5% protocol fee.
Nullmask is designed to keep illicit funds out of its pool:
Every deposit waits as pending until it is approved.
Depositing addresses are screened against the OFAC SDN list, the Chainalysis sanctions oracle, EU and UK sanctions lists, USDT and USDC issuer blacklists, and public scam lists, and are risk-scored by AMLBot.
Funds linked to sanctions, hacks, darknet markets, scams, ransomware, terrorism financing or child exploitation are refused and refunded automatically.
Approved addresses remain under continuous AMLBot monitoring.
Users can share their history with an accountant, institution or regulator through viewing keys, without publishing it. Every approved deposit also carries a revocation key pair. If a deposit is flagged after it enters the pool, the secret half is published, and every other user can prove their funds were never linked to it.
Contract source code is verified on Etherscan, and all protocol addresses are published with a signed proof of ownership at nullmask.io/compliance. Verified law enforcement requests sent to [email protected] are acknowledged within 72 hours.
NEAR Intents: private cross-chain bridging, live
Uniswap: private ETH ⇄ USDT swaps, live
Aerodrome and PancakeSwap: private swaps on Base and BNB Chain
Gate Wallet: integrated, with a MetaMask integration in talks
AMLBot: screening on every deposit
DefiLlama: listed
Nullmask has also partnered with Beldex, Dash Pay, QUAI and THORChain. It reaches users through social trading apps such as Fomo and through exchange listings including Aster perps.
“[Quote placeholder. Suggested: Privacy shouldn’t require a new wallet or a leap of faith. Nullmask works inside the wallet you already use, it screens every deposit at the door, and it gives users a way to prove their funds are clean. Fifty million dollars in a few weeks shows people want that.]” said Tomas Krnak, founder of Nullmask.
Nullmask was founded by Tomas Krnak, whose team of Zcash-focused developers spent two years bringing private transactions to hardware wallets. On a Zcash Foundation grant, they built shielded support into Trezor firmware, covering key derivation, shielded addresses and on-device signing, and moved the work onto Orchard, Zcash’s newer privacy design. The team’s changes to the transaction format were accepted into Zcash itself.
Nullmask is live on Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain. Next on the roadmap are Points Season One, Solana support and private perpetuals.
Nullmask is a zero-knowledge privacy protocol for private transfers and swaps that works inside users’ existing wallets, with no new wallet, seed phrase or custody. Deposits are screened before entering the shielded pool, and users keep full control of their funds. Learn more at nullmask.io.
Website: nullmask.io
Analytics: app.nullmask.io/analytics
DefiLlama: defillama.com/protocol/nullmask
