Question 1

What is zBase?

Accepted Answer

zBase is a zero-knowledge privacy facilitator for x402 agent payments. It is built on Vitalik Buterin's Privacy Pools and live on Base mainnet (Entrypoint 0x275fAA86e2E316Abe46807453c1D95f101d36431, USDC Privacy Pool 0x46753CED1E87871eA1aaF24Aed47DFA2D95855Dd on basescan.org), with on-chain Groth16 verification and compliance enforced by an Association Set Provider (ASP). It is an open pilot: payments settle, but they are not private until the pool has 30 independent depositors.

Question 2

How is zBase different from Tornado Cash?

Accepted Answer

zBase is compliant by construction. It uses an Association Set Provider that blocks illicit funds at deposit and lets users prove membership of the clean subset on withdrawal. This is the same architecture Vitalik Buterin and Ameen Soleimani co-authored in the 2023 Privacy Pools paper, and that the Ethereum Foundation integrated into Kohaku.

Question 3

Which chains does zBase support?

Accepted Answer

zBase is live on Base mainnet. A Solana devnet prototype exists; it is not live. The protocol is chain-agnostic at the circuit layer, so additional EVM and SVM chains can be added without re-auditing the ZK circuits.

Question 4

What is x402 and why does zBase use it?

Accepted Answer

x402 is the HTTP 402 Payment Required standard for AI agents to pay for API access. Every x402 payment is a public on-chain transfer that leaks the sender, receiver, and amount. zBase acts as the privacy facilitator between an agent's wallet and a paid endpoint, so the wire stays private without breaking the x402 protocol.

Question 5

Is zBase open source?

Accepted Answer

Yes. zBase is built on 0xbow's Privacy Pools implementation under the Apache 2.0 license. The 0xbow contracts are referenced as a dependency; the x402 facilitator, Solana port, MCP server, threshold ASP, and on-chain fee-split mechanism are zBase's original work (~6,900 lines). Source published at github.com/goheesheng/zBase.

Question 6

What is Base Batches 003?

Accepted Answer

Base Batches 003 is the third cohort of Coinbase's Base Batches accelerator program for projects building on the Base L2. zBase was selected as a finalist for the 2026 program.

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