Xochi: Somos axolotls.

Soft-bodied, observable. Spawn point shouldn't determine whether you get privacy. Named for Lake Xochimilco, because the water doesn't care who's swimming.

The Agentic Dark Pool on Ethereum

Privacy in crypto today forces a bad choice: full transparency (Uniswap, CoW) or full privacy (Tornado Cash, now sanctioned). Dubai banned all anonymity-enhancing tools in January 2026, but the ban's definition excludes assets with "mitigating technologies" for traceability.

ERC-8262 (opens in new tab) "Xochi's ZK Compliance Oracle" is that technology: zero-knowledge proofs that verify compliance without revealing transaction data. Cryptographic compliance. The regulator verifies a proof. They never see the trade.

What Xochi Does

You sign an intent, solvers compete to fill it (~2s typical, <6s P95).

A ZK proof validates compliance without revealing the trade. Privacy is free by default. Better rates and deeper privacy unlock through attestation-based tiered trust scoring. Large trades split into independent sub-settlements, each with its own proof, routable across public, stealth, or shielded venues. AES-256 and SHA-256, used throughout the stack, are already quantum-resistant. Xochi's ZK Compliance Oracle circuits can migrate from SNARKs to hash-based STARKs when needed.

ZK Compliance: Link credentials to unlock better rates and deeper privacy. Settlement: Public wallet, L1 stealth (ERC-5564 + gasless ERC-4337 claim), or L2 shielded via pxe-bridge (opens in new tab). pxe-bridge embeds an Aztec PXE (Private eXecution Environment) that runs private transaction logic locally, generates a ZK proof, and submits it to the Aztec network. The network verifies the proof without ever seeing the trade inputs.

Xochi ID (XID): Onboard with a WebAuthn passkey (biometric), no wallet required. No username stored server-side. Credentials encrypted in KV with AES-256-GCM. Login is biometric only via discoverable credentials. Wallet connection is optional. Wallet-only users get Standard tier (0.24% on stablecoins, public settlement). XID holders earn trust via attestations for lower fees and deeper privacy. The server never learns which XID controls which wallet. WebAuthn's algorithm agility provides a migration path to post-quantum credential types. Agents transact as Guests (anonymous, x402 pay-per-call) or under a Member's Mandate (per-request EIP-712 envelope, inherits the Member's tier). See whitepaper Section 3.

The Problem

Nothing on-chain is both private and compliant. Privacy tools got sanctioned. Dark pools offer no regulatory path. Since The Merge, $1.1B+ has been extracted via MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) per ESMA's July 2025 risk analysis. Bots see your pending transaction and trade ahead of it (frontrunning) or sandwich it, buying before and selling after your trade to pocket the price difference. A protocol treasury rotating from USDC to EURC signals the move to every bot on Base. Bigger trades bleed more.

How We Solve It

The Xochi ZK Compliance Oracle is designed to generate cryptographic proofs that a trade is AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and sanctions-compliant without revealing the trade itself. It is not live yet (testnet Q2 2026, mainnet Q3). Tokens settle into stealth smart accounts: one-time receiving addresses that can't be linked back to you (ERC-5564), deployed as smart contract wallets (ERC-4337) that the recipient claims without needing ETH for gas. You sign what you want, solvers compete to fill it. Nothing hits the mempool (the public queue of pending transactions).

Where Xochi Sits

The privacy stack has layers. Xochi is the execution layer; the others sit elsewhere.

Wallet / deposit privacy (Railgun, Panther): Hide your wallet, but swaps still happen on Uniswap in public. MEV bots see the swap. Compliance means handing over view keys. That's delayed transparency, not privacy.

Deposit set membership (Privacy Pools by 0xbow): Prove your deposit isn't in a sanctioned set. Necessary but not sufficient. Doesn't cover jurisdiction-specific risk thresholds or anti-structuring. Composes with Xochi: clean withdrawal, then private execution.

Privacy L1s (Secret, Penumbra): Full privacy on a separate chain. Bridge in, trade, bridge out. No compliance path.

Privacy-native chains (Monero, Zcash, Litecoin MWEB): Stronger transaction privacy, no smart contracts, no ERC-20s, no compliance path. Different tradeoff: maximum opacity at the cost of operating outside regulated financial rails entirely. Xochi solves privacy where the assets already are.

Kohaku (Ethereum Foundation wallet SDK): Stealth addresses, per-dapp accounts, optional reveal for audits. Wallet-layer only. Once you trade, privacy ends. Complementary to Xochi: Kohaku is the wallet, Xochi is the DEX. A Kohaku stealth address can receive a Xochi stealth or shielded settlement directly. GitHub: ethereum/kohaku (opens in new tab).

Xochi (execution venue): Hides the swap itself, settles on Ethereum. Nine ZK proof types cover what regulators actually need. "Not in the bad set" is necessary but not sufficient. Xochi proves the full claim. Formalized as ERC-8262 (opens in new tab) (Draft).

How It Works

Riddler is our solver, the entity that sources liquidity and executes trades. It pulls from its own inventory, centralized exchange books, decentralized exchange pools, and flash loans (uncollateralized loans repaid within a single transaction). Orders beyond available liquidity are rejected, not partially filled. Own API surface, own fee tiers, own settlement targets. External solvers can join without gatekeeping. Every non-Open, non-Public swap is cash-positive. Revenue model in whitepaper Section 7.

Mana (opens in new tab) is our Elixir Ethereum execution client (Apache 2.0 + MIT), a direct contribution to client diversity. The BEAM runtime provides fault isolation, hot code upgrades, and preemptive scheduling that no other execution client offers. Elixir fails differently from Rust, which is the point of client diversity. Hot code upgrades also enable signature scheme swaps without validator downtime, a practical path to post-quantum readiness.

Target Market

Protocol treasuries rotating reserves without signaling
DAO treasuries needing private FX (USDC/EURC) for contributor payroll
Crypto funds executing size without moving markets
Retail wanting basic privacy for free
AI agents transacting as Guests (anonymous, pay-per-call) or under a Mandate from a Member (inherit the Member's tier and privacy). Routes via Raxol (opens in new tab) (MIT-licensed, supports x402 HTTP payments and multi-path payment routing)

Status & Roadmap

Pre-launch: infrastructure live, collecting early access wallets, recapitalizing solver. Riddler live on six chains (Ethereum, Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Robinhood Chain for USDG/Paxos). <6s P95, ~2.1s typical. Aztec sequencer node (Alpha Network) and pxe-bridge (opens in new tab) deployed for shielded settlement. Aztec is experimental alpha software; v5 with security fixes targets July 2026. All infrastructure on bare-metal we own. Solver capitalization and order filling Q2 2026. Flash loan fills and advanced order types (TWAP for time-sliced execution, iceberg for hidden large orders) on roadmap. Xochi's ZK Compliance Oracle testnet Q2 2026, mainnet Q3. FX pairs (EURC, GYEN) Q4.

Team

Name	Role	Background
DROO	Protocol Director	Lido, Blockdaemon, General Dynamics
Bloo	Protocol Specialist	DOJ Financial Intel, FBI AML, Pentagon
Merkle (opens in new tab)	DevSecOps	Immunefi Whitehat, Lido, here.build

Full backgrounds in whitepaper.