Facts checked on 4 November 2026. Primus has not announced a token for users, and nothing here is investment advice.
A public blockchain shows everyone everything. A fund, a company or a careful individual often cannot work that way, because a visible balance or transfer reveals size, timing and strategy. Primus (formerly PADO) is trying to give on-chain finance two things at once: proof that data is real, and privacy for the data itself.
Disclosure: I'm taking part in a Kaito campaign for Primus, where creators can be rewarded in PRIM tokens. If you join through my Kaito referral link, I receive a referral bonus in the campaign. That does not change the facts below, and I mark what is unconfirmed.
The problem Primus is aiming at
Most valuable data lives off-chain: exchange balances, account history, credentials. It is valuable because it is private. Today you usually have to choose between exposing it so it can be verified, or keeping it private and losing the ability to use it in on-chain apps.
Primus also argues against solving this with a new privacy chain, because liquidity and users do not migrate easily. Its pitch is a layer that plugs into chains that already exist, such as Base and BNB Chain.
zkTLS: prove what a website said, without showing it
TLS is the encryption behind the padlock in your browser. zkTLS adds cryptographic proofs on top of a normal TLS session. The result is a statement anyone can check, for example:
- my balance on an exchange is above a threshold,
- this account is more than three years old,
- this follower count is real.
The raw data and your login details stay with you. The website does not need to cooperate, change anything or offer an API.
Who vouches for the session? A party called an attestor witnesses the encrypted session and signs the result. That is the trust assumption of the whole design. Primus runs its attestors in trusted execution environments (TEEs) through Phala, so keys are created and used inside a hardware enclave and software versions can be pinned. It also supports two modes: MPC, which favours resistance to a tampering client, and proxy, which favours speed.
FHE: compute without decrypting
Fully homomorphic encryption lets software calculate on encrypted values. Only the owner can decrypt the result. Primus uses it in its Confidential Finance product on BNB Chain, where balances and transfer amounts can stay hidden while the app still works. I cover how that works in a separate article.
What exists today
- Proof of Reserves. Primus pulls reserve data, for example a balance from an exchange, with zkTLS, and a zero-knowledge proof of the total is produced with Brevis. The live Unitas dashboard showed about 55.4 million USD in reserves and a backing ratio of 1.05 on 3 November 2026.
- zkTLS on BNB Chain. The verification layer went live on 23 June 2026.
- Kaito Pulse. Kaito's browser extension uses Primus zkTLS to verify account facts without sharing credentials.
- Primus Points. A points page where users verify accounts and build a reputation score. I cover it in this guide.
- ZKredit. A credit-identity layer with BNB Chain and Brevis. BNB Chain's own documentation lists it as in development, with no launch date.
Backing and research
Primus announced a 6.5 million USD pre-seed and seed round in February 2025, led by Dispersion Capital, Symbolic Capital and VanEck, with Samsung Next, Alchemy and Amber Group among others. YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) invested in 2026, with the amount undisclosed. The team has published at USENIX Security, and CEO Xiang Xie holds a PhD in cryptography.
What to treat with caution
- Self-reported numbers. Primus quotes more than 1 million users (counting extension holders, builders and app users) and more than 72 million USD of reserves verified. Other sources report around 60,000 extension users, and the live Unitas dashboard shows lower reserves than the headline. Quote a figure together with its source and date.
- Own benchmarks. Primus says its zkTLS is up to 10 times faster than TLSNotary in its own open benchmark. That is a claim from the vendor.
- Trust is moved, not removed. TEEs reduce trust in the attestor, but depend on hardware and have a history of side-channel attacks. Primus documentation says the attestor's integrity is a separate problem from the protocol.
- Network maturity. The attestor network is permissioned, and one independent review found no events on its coordination contracts on Base for about 74 days, with the caveat that verification calls leave no trace in logs.
- No audit by Primus. Its Proof of Reserves page says it verifies project-provided data technically and does not certify or audit it.
My take
Primus is interesting because it has working products, a cryptography-first team and a clear answer to why institutions need this. The honest open question is adoption: how many independent, paying projects rely on it. I would track that, not the points or the token talk.
This article is also available in Polish: Primus po ludzku: czym są zkTLS i FHE.