Privacy Comes to Monad with Unlink
Monad Foundation has announced that Unlink, a zero-knowledge (ZK) privacy layer, is now live on the Monad mainnet. Unlink is deployed as a smart contract directly on Monad, requiring no separate chain or bridge. It enables institutions to deposit, transfer, withdraw, and interact with external contracts without exposing their onchain activity details. For institutions, the public nature of blockchains has long been a barrier: address balances, counterparties, and transaction sizes are all visible. Unlink addresses this by using ZK proofs to keep transfers private while allowing the contract to verify validity without learning the sender, recipient, or amount.
What Gets Exposed, and Why It Matters
On a public ledger, one address can reveal which markets a desk supplies, position sizes, and how allocations shift over time. Position sizes indicate conviction; reallocations indicate a change of view—information that a firm would normally protect as competitive intelligence. The conventional workaround—moving activity to a separate private chain—removes exposure but cuts the capital off from existing liquidity, markets, and composability. Unlink provides a solution that keeps capital in the same EVM ecosystem while adding privacy.
How Unlink Works
Unlink is a privacy layer implemented as a smart contract on Monad. Users deposit ERC-20 tokens into the contract; balances are stored as encrypted notes. Private transfers use ZK proofs so that the contract never learns the sender, recipient, or amount. The SDK supports four operations: deposit, transfer, withdraw, and execute. The execute operation is particularly important: it allows a private balance to fund actions on external contracts—such as supplying to a lending market—without linking that activity back to a public wallet. Both non-custodial (keys in the user’s browser) and custodial (server holding accounts on behalf) integrations are possible. Additionally, Unlink is built with scoped audit views: finance teams, compliance functions, or external reviewers can be granted visibility into specific records without exposing the entire account graph. This balances confidentiality with regulatory reporting.
Why This Belongs on Monad
Unlink chose Monad for two primary reasons. First, Monad is fully EVM-compatible, so Unlink can leverage existing contracts, tooling, and liquidity without any migration. Privacy becomes a property that capital carries into the existing economy rather than a reason to leave. The Monad ecosystem currently includes Aave, Morpho, Uniswap, and Curve, with $350 million in total value locked (TVL), tokenized assets, and more than 30 fiat on- and off-ramps. Capital routed through Unlink can stay private while still being supplied, borrowed against, traded, and settled across these protocols. Composability is preserved, and privacy is added around the activity rather than walling it off.
Second, privacy usually comes at a performance cost due to computationally heavy ZK cryptography. Many privacy-preserving systems throttle throughput significantly. Monad’s 10,000 TPS, 400ms block times, 800ms finality, and near-zero fees provide enough headroom for the privacy layer to operate without imposing performance or cost penalties on users. A separate private chain cannot offer this combination: performance, composability, and privacy on a single EVM chain.
A Foundation for What Comes Next
The launch is the first step. Private accounts and private transfers on Monad form the base layer, and the model extends in two important directions. First, private DeFi: through the execute flow, a private balance can supply to lending markets, allocate across vaults, or rebalance positions without broadcasting the underlying strategy. Second, payments: payroll, vendor payouts, treasury movements, and B2B settlements all require confidentiality on amounts and counterparties. These flows have stayed off-chain precisely because a public ledger broadcasts them. A privacy layer on a chain that already has liquidity and live payment rails makes them workable onchain. With Unlink, money moves on Monad privately while retaining all the benefits the ecosystem offers.
About Monad
Monad is a high-performance, institutional-grade Layer 1 blockchain designed to power the financial layer of the internet. It is fully EVM-compatible, delivering 10,000 TPS, 400ms block times, 800ms finality, and near-zero fees without requiring specialized hardware. The network runs on consumer-grade machines, supporting accessible participation and decentralized operation: over 200 independently operated validators across 30+ countries and 55+ cities secure the chain today.
About Unlink
Unlink is a privacy layer for public blockchains that lets institutions and businesses hold, move, and use capital onchain without exposing balances, counterparties, or transaction history. It deploys as a smart contract on chains teams already use, with no separate network and no bridge. It uses ZK proofs to keep transfers private while producing scoped audit views for compliance and reporting. Designed for fintechs, payment processors, and treasury teams, Unlink supports private payments, treasury operations, and private DeFi through a single EVM-compatible SDK.