Ethereum’s zkAPI brings privacy-preserving API payments to mainnet
Ethereum’s zkAPI has gone live on mainnet as a working version of an earlier zero-knowledge API payment proposal. The system is described as a privacy-preserving way to make prepaid API payments, and as a way to settle AI-model and metered-API transactions without linking each request to a credit card or API key.
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Users making API requests, and the services that bill for them, will notice a different payment flow now that zkAPI is live on mainnet. The system is framed as supporting private, prepaid access, so the request-level payment relationship changes from a visible identifier tied to each call to an anonymous settlement model.
In practice, the change is about how API use is paid for: the older model linked each request to a credit card or API key, while zkAPI is described as removing that requirement. What stays the same is that the system is still for paying for AI models and metered APIs, just through a different access pattern.
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