No.327
Zerobase ZBT
real-time ZK prover
🎭 a masked vault-keeper: ask if your secret is real and he nods in a blink, but the door never opens
💬 “Tell me the secret once. I will hand back a sealed stamp that anyone can check, and the stamp says you were telling the truth, nothing more. I never repeat what you told me, and I answer before you finish blinking.”
- A network of computers that makes zero-knowledge proofs fast, often in a few hundred milliseconds, so apps can prove things without showing the private data.
- It pairs those proofs with secure hardware called TEEs to run heavy work off-chain, then checks the result cheaply on-chain.
- Built by Mirror Tang and Shawn Chong around 2024, backed by Binance Labs (now YZi Labs); the ZBT token went live October 17, 2025.
- Supply is capped at 1 billion ZBT, with the biggest share kept aside to reward node operators who stake.
📖 The Story
The whole project starts from one awkward fact about blockchains: to trust a result, everyone usually has to see the work. That is fine for a public payment and terrible for a private login or a large trade you would rather not broadcast to the world.
Zerobase grew out of that tension. Mirror Tang, a cryptography academic, and his co-founder Shawn Chong began building it around 2024, with the team reportedly based in Tokyo. In October 2024 they raised roughly $5 million in a round joined by Binance Labs, now called YZi Labs, alongside Lightspeed Faction and dao5. (You will see bigger names attached to it online; some of those, like Sequoia and the Ethereum Foundation, are not confirmed, so we leave them out.)
The idea they settled on is a prover network. Instead of every app building its own slow proof system, they run a shared crowd of computers whose only job is to produce zero-knowledge proofs quickly. A proof is a small sealed stamp: it shows a statement is true, like 'this user is who they claim' or 'this trade follows the rules', while keeping the underlying details hidden. The selling point is speed. Zerobase aims to return that stamp in a few hundred milliseconds, fast enough to sit inside a real app without making you wait.
On October 17, 2025 the ZBT token went live. Binance picked it as the 54th project in its HODLer Airdrop program, handing some tokens free to BNB holders, and Bybit listed it for spot trading the same day. The vault-keeper had opened for business.
📊 Stats
These are altrookie editorial ratings, not live market data. How we score the codex →
🧩 How it works
The trick is splitting the work into two halves. The heavy lifting happens off-chain: node computers run your computation inside a TEE, a sealed pocket of hardware that even the machine's owner cannot peek into, and produce a zero-knowledge proof of the result. Then only that small proof goes on-chain, where it can be checked cheaply and quickly. So the private data stays off the public ledger, but the answer is still trustworthy. Behind the scenes, work is spread across many hubs and nodes using a consistent-hashing scheme, which keeps things scalable and lets the network keep running if some nodes drop. The network is kept honest by staking: nodes lock up ZBT and earn rewards for proving correctly.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Solves a real problem: proving something is true while keeping the private details hidden, useful for private logins (zkLogin), dark-pool trading (zkDarkPool) and more
- Built for speed, aiming to return proofs in a few hundred milliseconds, fast enough to live inside everyday apps
- Supply is hard-capped at 1 billion ZBT, and the largest token slice rewards the node operators who actually keep the network secure
- It is infrastructure, not an app. Its value depends on other projects choosing to build on it, and that adoption is still early
- Leaning on TEEs means leaning on hardware makers; if a chip's secure pocket is ever broken, the privacy promise leans harder on the proofs alone
- Very young, live only since October 2025, with a small float at launch and most tokens unlocking later, so the price can swing hard on news and unlocks
🧬 Evolution lineage
Zerobase is not a fork or a sibling of any single coin, it was built from scratch. Its real family is conceptual: the cohort of zero-knowledge and privacy-infrastructure projects. Binance Labs (YZi Labs) backed it, but that is an investor, not a bloodline.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Zerobase?
- A network of computers that generates zero-knowledge proofs in real time, often in a few hundred milliseconds. A proof lets an app show that something is true, like a login or a trade, while keeping the private data behind it hidden. ZBT is the token that pays for and secures the network.
- What does the ZBT token actually do?
- Three jobs. Apps spend ZBT to pay for proof generation, node operators stake ZBT and earn rewards for doing the work honestly, and holders use it to vote on governance. The supply is fixed at 1 billion ZBT and never grows past that.
- Is Zerobase inflationary?
- No. The total and maximum supply are both fixed at 1 billion ZBT, so no new coins are ever minted beyond that. About 220 million were circulating at launch, with the rest unlocking over time. The largest slice, around 43.75%, is set aside as staking rewards for node operators.
- Where can I get ZBT?
- ZBT launched on October 17, 2025, listed on Binance as its 54th HODLer Airdrop, with some given free to BNB holders, and on Bybit spot. Pairs include ZBT against USDT, USDC, BNB, FDUSD and TRY. It is young and can swing hard, so only try a small amount. (Information only, not advice to use any particular exchange or to invest.)
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only