Overview
- Helius completed the purchase of Light Protocol on Wednesday and has begun integrating Light’s team and technology while sunsetting the Light Token SDK.
- Light Protocol built Solana’s original zero-knowledge syscalls and a ZK Compression method that its founders say can cut onchain state storage costs by up to 1,000x by using zero-knowledge proofs to compress data before it is stored.
- Helius says it will embed Light’s ZK syscalls and compression work into its RPC and indexing services and roll the new privacy infrastructure out to developers in phases over the next several months.
- The combined product is pitched to enable private payments and confidential DeFi for enterprise and institutional customers by keeping transaction details hidden while still verifying correctness onchain.
- Observers warn the move raises legal risk because onchain privacy tools sit in a shifting regulatory gray zone and past cases like Tornado Cash show such tooling can draw enforcement attention.