Ethereum Now Lets You Pay for AI Without Revealing Who You Are

What happened

Decrypt News Technology Ethereum Now Lets You Pay for AI Without Revealing Who You Are Ethereum's zkAPI lets users prepay in USDC (Circle’s dollar-pegged token) and query AI models through cryptographic proofs, so no single party sees both who they are and what they ask. In brief The Ethereum Foundation and the Open Anonymity Project announced zkAPI on Ethereum mainnet on October 1, letting users prepay in USDC and receive capped, short-lived API (the interface one piece of software uses to talk to another) keys through zero-knowledge proofs.

Ethereum's zkAPI lets users prepay in USDC and query AI models through cryptographic proofs, so no single party sees both who they are and what they ask. The design follows a February 2026 Ethereum Research proposal by Davide Crapis, who leads the foundation's dAI team, and Vitalik Buterin.

The project's repository labels the protocol experimental, and its documentation points to OpenRouter as the AI provider behind the keys. The Ethereum Foundation has put zkAPI live on Ethereum's main network, a system that lets people pay for AI services without tying their identity to what they ask, according to the Ethereum Foundation's announcement . “zkAPI separates payment from identity,” the Foundation continued.

Key facts

• In brief The Ethereum Foundation and the Open Anonymity Project — announced: zkAPI on Ethereum mainnet on October 1, letting users prepay in USDC and receive capped, short-lived API keys through zero-knowledge proofs