ZKIM Development Team
We are a collective of cryptographers, distributed-systems engineers, and privacy researchers shaping the world’s first zero-knowledge decentralized platform. Grounded in advanced cryptography, peer-to-peer networking, and modern blockchain architecture, we build systems where privacy is a native property—not a bolt-on feature. Our team has driven innovations in zero-knowledge protocols, privacy-focused communication, content-addressable storage, and resilient decentralized infrastructure. zkim is built by people who believe the internet should be open, trustless, and fully user-sovereign.
The ZKIM Development Team is a collective of cryptographers, distributed systems engineers, and privacy researchers building the world's first zero-knowledge decentralized platform.
Working across cryptography, peer-to-peer networking, and blockchain technology, the team has developed solutions for privacy-preserving communication:
- •ZKIM CAS with 95% deduplication
- •Three-layer encryption for privacy-preserving search
- •Zero-knowledge key management without seed phrases
- •Multi-chain wallet across 39+ blockchains
- •Bootstrap-free discovery via Kademlia DHT
- •Custom .zkim format with XChaCha20-Poly1305
- •OPRF-based search for private queries
- •Post-quantum cryptography implementation
Research focuses on zero-knowledge proofs, privacy-preserving technologies, decentralized protocols, and post-quantum cryptographic primitives.
- ✓First zero-knowledge decentralized platform
- ✓95% storage deduplication through ZKIM CAS
- ✓Multi-chain wallet support (39+ blockchains)
- ✓Three-layer encryption architecture
- ✓Privacy-preserving search capabilities
- ✓Bootstrap-free peer discovery
- ✓Custom .zkim file format with XChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption
- ✓OPRF-based searchable encryption for privacy-preserving search
- ✓Zero-knowledge key management eliminating seed phrases
- ✓Post-quantum cryptography implementation
- ✓ZKIM-native Content Addressable Storage (CAS) system
- ✓Geographic peer optimization for low-latency routing
- ✓Multi-modal biometric authentication system
- ✓Backend-free P2P architecture with no server dependencies
Blog Posts
Introducing zk.im: Zero-Knowledge Interface Modules — Build Anything, Own Everything
zk.im is a decentralized platform built on Zero-Knowledge Interface Modules. This article introduces the platform's architecture, modules, and how it provides decentralized alternatives to centralized services—messaging, storage, wallets, escrow, design tools, and more.
Backend-Free Architecture: How ZKIM Achieves True Decentralization
Discover how ZKIM achieves true decentralization through a backend-free architecture that runs entirely in the browser. Learn how client-side processing, peer-to-peer networking, and distributed storage eliminate the need for central servers, providing unlimited scalability, censorship resistance, and complete user control.
Biometric Authentication: Hardware-Backed Security with Progressive Protection
Discover how ZKIM's biometric authentication system provides hardware-backed security using WebAuthn, progressive security levels, and twin detection. Learn how biometric authentication enhances wallet security while maintaining user convenience and privacy.
Community TURN Infrastructure: How Users Power the Network
Discover how ZKIM's community-driven TURN infrastructure enables unlimited scalability, censorship resistance, and zero infrastructure costs. Learn how users contribute TURN servers to power the network, creating a truly decentralized and resilient messaging infrastructure.
DeCom Architecture: Decentralized Communication Without Compromise
Explore ZKIM's DeCom (Decentralized Communication) architecture—a complete messaging system that eliminates centralized dependencies while maintaining high availability, low latency, and strong security. Learn how three-layer encryption, adaptive routing, and multi-layer storage work together to create a truly decentralized messaging platform.
Building on ZKIM: Developer SDK and API Integration Guide
Learn how to build on ZKIM with our comprehensive Developer SDK and API Integration Guide. Discover how to integrate messaging, wallet, storage, and other ZKIM features into your applications with our developer-friendly APIs and 15-minute integration promise.
Enterprise Messaging: How ZKIM Meets Business Security Requirements
Discover how ZKIM's enterprise messaging platform meets business security requirements with end-to-end encryption, regulatory compliance (GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA), audit trails, and enterprise-grade security features. Learn how ZKIM enables secure business communication while maintaining privacy and meeting compliance standards.
Escrow Services: Secure Multi-Chain Transactions with ZKIM
Discover how ZKIM's escrow services enable secure multi-chain transactions for DeFi, NFT trading, and business payments. Learn how encrypted escrow contracts, dispute resolution, and multi-chain support provide trustless transactions across 39+ blockchains without relying on centralized intermediaries.
FastCDC Chunking: How ZKIM Achieves 95% Deduplication Rates
Discover how ZKIM uses FastCDC (Fast Content-Defined Chunking) to achieve 95% deduplication rates, reducing storage requirements by 20x for similar content. Learn about content-defined chunking, rolling hash algorithms, and how ZKIM CAS automatically eliminates duplicate content while maintaining high performance.
Guardian Network: Social Recovery Without Compromising Privacy
Discover how ZKIM's Guardian Network enables secure social recovery for your Invisible Wallet without compromising privacy. Learn how multi-signature recovery, guardian verification, and privacy-preserving mechanisms work together to provide a robust alternative to seed phrases.
Whitepapers
ZKIM CAS: A Novel Content Addressable Storage System
This paper presents ZKIM CAS (Content Addressable Storage), a decentralized storage system that uses BLAKE3 hashing for content addressing, FastCDC (Fast Content-Defined Chunking) for efficient data management, and a multi-layer storage architecture for high availability. ZKIM CAS addresses the challenges of content deduplication, distributed storage, and efficient content retrieval in decentralized messaging platforms. The system generates deterministic Object IDs (ZOIDs) from content hashes, enabling automatic deduplication and efficient content distribution. We describe the architecture, implementation details, and performance characteristics of ZKIM CAS, demonstrating its effectiveness in production deployments. The system achieves content deduplication rates of up to 95% for similar content and supports multi-peer retrieval for large objects, reducing storage overhead and improving retrieval performance.
ZKIM File Format: A Three-Layer Encrypted Binary Format Specification
This paper presents the ZKIM File Format, a production-ready binary format specification featuring three-layer encryption (Platform/User/Content), XChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption, Merkle tree integrity verification with BLAKE3, and searchable encryption with OPRF (Oblivious Pseudorandom Function) on Ristretto255. The format addresses the challenges of privacy-preserving search, multi-level access control, and content integrity in decentralized messaging platforms. We describe the wire format specification, encryption layers, key management strategies, and search capabilities. The format achieves privacy-preserving search without data access, perfect forward secrecy through per-file random keys, and tamper detection through Merkle tree verification. Performance evaluation demonstrates efficient encryption/decryption operations with minimal overhead while maintaining strong security guarantees.
Invisible Wallet: Zero-Knowledge Key Management for Multi-Chain Support
This paper presents the Invisible Wallet system, a zero-knowledge key management approach that eliminates traditional key storage while providing universal multi-chain support. The system uses multi-factor key derivation (wallet + TOTP + guardian), Argon2id13 key derivation function, progressive security model based on transaction value, and social recovery mechanisms with guardian system. Unlike traditional wallets that store seed phrases or private keys, Invisible Wallet constructs keys on-demand from multiple factors, ensuring that keys are never stored in persistent form. We describe the architecture, implementation details, and security characteristics of Invisible Wallet, demonstrating its effectiveness in production deployments. The system achieves zero-knowledge key management without seed phrases, supports multiple blockchain networks (EVM, Solana, Bitcoin, etc.), and provides social recovery through guardian-based mechanisms. Performance evaluation demonstrates efficient key derivation and multi-chain operations while maintaining strong security guarantees.
Kademlia DHT Implementation for Decentralized Messaging
This paper describes the implementation of Kademlia DHT (Distributed Hash Table) for ZKIM, a decentralized messaging platform. The implementation covers XOR-based distance metrics, peer discovery and routing, username resolution (ZNRS), and message indexing. Unlike traditional Kademlia implementations that require bootstrap nodes, our implementation supports bootstrap-free discovery through iterative lookup and last-known peer fallback mechanisms. We describe the architecture, implementation details, and performance characteristics of the Kademlia DHT implementation, demonstrating its effectiveness in production deployments. The system achieves efficient peer discovery through XOR-based routing, supports username resolution through ZNRS (ZKIM Name Resolution Service), and provides message indexing for decentralized messaging. Performance evaluation demonstrates efficient routing and discovery operations while maintaining strong security guarantees through Ed25519 signatures and BLAKE3 hashing.
ZKIM Messaging: DeCom Architecture for Decentralized Communication
This paper presents ZKIM Messaging, a decentralized messaging system implementing DeCom (Decentralized Communication) architecture. ZKIM Messaging provides end-to-end encrypted messaging, adaptive message routing and delivery, room management and group messaging, and distributed message storage and retrieval. The system uses three-layer encryption (Platform/User/Content) via ZKIM File Format, WebRTC-based peer-to-peer transport, and multi-layer storage (CAS + DHT + Local cache) for high availability. We describe the DeCom architecture, implementation details, and performance characteristics of ZKIM Messaging, demonstrating its effectiveness in production deployments. The system achieves end-to-end encryption with privacy-preserving search capabilities, supports adaptive routing based on network conditions, and provides distributed storage with automatic deduplication. Performance evaluation demonstrates efficient message delivery with sub-second latency for small groups and scalable delivery for large groups through relay hierarchies.
Searchable Encryption with OPRF for Privacy-Preserving Content Search
This paper describes the implementation of searchable encryption using OPRF (Oblivious Pseudorandom Function) with Ristretto255 for the ZKIM file format. The system enables privacy-preserving search over encrypted content without revealing search queries or content to the platform. We present a production-ready implementation that integrates OPRF-based trapdoor generation, encrypted search indexes, bucket policy for side-channel resistance, and epoch-based key rotation. The system achieves privacy-preserving search without data access, enabling users to search their encrypted messages and files while maintaining complete privacy. Performance evaluation demonstrates efficient search operations with sub-second query response times for typical workloads while maintaining strong security guarantees. The implementation integrates with the ZKIM messaging system via `ZKIMMessageIndexingService`, providing real-world deployment data and practical insights into privacy-preserving search at scale.
Cryptographic Architecture for Decentralized Messaging Platforms
This paper describes the cryptographic architecture of ZKIM, a decentralized messaging platform that implements a comprehensive cryptographic stack using classical cryptography with libsodium-wrappers-sumo integration, BLAKE3 as the standard hash algorithm, and comprehensive key management strategies. The architecture provides 256-bit security level across all cryptographic operations, implements zero-knowledge key management, and maintains strict security standards through automated enforcement. We describe the algorithm suite, library integration, key management strategies, and security properties of the cryptographic architecture. The system achieves strong security guarantees through XChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption, Ed25519 digital signatures, X25519 key exchange, Argon2id13 key derivation, and BLAKE3 hashing. Performance evaluation demonstrates efficient cryptographic operations with minimal overhead while maintaining strong security guarantees. The architecture is production-ready with real-world deployment and comprehensive security testing.
Geographic Network Optimization for Decentralized P2P Systems
This paper presents geographic network optimization strategies for ZKIM, a decentralized P2P messaging platform. The system implements latency-based peer selection, regional performance analysis, censorship resistance through geographic distribution, and network diversity metrics. We describe the architecture, implementation details, and performance characteristics of the geographic optimization system, demonstrating its effectiveness in production deployments. The system achieves efficient peer selection through RTT-based scoring, connection quality assessment, and geographic diversity enforcement. Performance evaluation demonstrates improved latency and reliability through geographic optimization while maintaining strong security guarantees. The implementation includes real-world deployment data from production environments, providing practical insights into geographic network optimization at scale.