Ethereum's zkAPI Brings Private Prepaid Access to Mainnet

Ethereum's zkAPI is now live on mainnet, bringing private and prepaid access to AI and other API services.

The Ethereum Foundation announced that zkAPI has gone live on mainnet, following a February proposal by researcher Davide Crapis and co-founder Vitalik Buterin for ZK-based API usage credits.

According to Vittorio Rivabella, AI coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation's dAI team, users can deposit funds into an Ethereum vault, then use zero-knowledge proofs to prove they have enough credit without revealing their billing identities.

The system issues short-lived API keys with predefined spending limits, allowing prompts to be sent directly to the AI provider while usage is settled separately through the payment layer.