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Confidential Transfer is a privacy layer on Stable that shields the amount of a USDT0 transfer while keeping sender and recipient addresses publicly visible. The shielded amount is readable only by the transacting parties and authorized regulatory auditors, using zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography to prove validity without revealing the value. The feature is under development; this page describes the target model.

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The problem it solves

Standard on-chain transfers are fully transparent; anyone can read the sender, recipient, and amount. For business payments, that transparency is a data-leakage problem:
  • A retailer paying suppliers on-chain exposes order volumes and wholesale pricing to any observer.
  • A treasury moving funds between accounts advertises its position sizes.
  • A payroll run publishes salary data to the entire network.
Full opacity (Monero-style) would solve this but breaks compliance: regulators and auditors can’t verify the transaction. Selective confidentiality (amounts hidden, parties auditable) is the model Stable targets.

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What stays visible, what doesn’t

FieldVisible on-chainShielded
Sender address✓
Recipient address✓
Transfer amount✓
Auxiliary metadata✓
The shielded amount is encrypted. Valid proofs attest that the transfer is balance-consistent (no inflation, no negative amounts) without revealing the value itself. Only the sender, recipient, and authorized regulatory auditors can decrypt the shielded value.

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How it fits the compliance model

Two properties make the design auditable:
  • Deterministic auditor access. Regulatory auditors hold keys that decrypt shielded amounts for transactions in their jurisdiction. Business privacy is preserved against random observers; compliance scrutiny is not.
  • Standard address transparency. AML/KYC tooling that operates on address-level flows (sanction checks, source-of-funds analysis) works against the same public address graph as any transparent chain.

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When to use it

Confidential Transfer fits any flow where the amount is commercially sensitive but the counterparties are appropriately public:
  • Supplier and invoice payments where order sizes reveal pricing.
  • Treasury operations where position sizes reveal strategy.
  • Payroll where individual salaries shouldn’t be indexable by competitors.
  • Large OTC settlements where price discovery against orderbook tape is a risk.
For flows that need address-level privacy as well (e.g. whistleblower donations), Confidential Transfer alone isn’t sufficient. Those use cases need additional address-obscuring primitives that Stable doesn’t provide.

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Status

Confidential Transfer is in development. See Roadmap for timing. The mechanism will ship as a dedicated transfer path alongside standard USDT0 transfers; existing applications that don’t opt in are unaffected.

USDT as gas

Understand the asset model confidential transfers shield.

Flow of funds

See where confidentiality fits in the end-to-end payment lifecycle.

Roadmap

Track when confidential transfer ships.
Last modified on April 23, 2026