Privacy-First Advertising Powered by Zcash Shielded Transactions

Community Grants Applications
1

Hello Zcash Community,

I’m sharing my grant proposal , a privacy-first, AI-powered advertising and affiliate platform that replaces invasive tracking with blockchain-verified, user-consented ad engagements. Each interaction is validated using zero-knowledge proofs to confirm a legitimate click, view or conversion without revealing user data. Only once the ZKP verifies authenticity is a reward payout authorized.

These payouts are made in shielded Zcash transactions, ensuring both the engagement and the payment remain private, verifiable and tamper-proof.

This model directly advances the Zcash mission by:

  • Demonstrating Zcash’s utility in a real-world, high-frequency transaction environment.
  • Onboarding non-crypto users (advertising audiences, publishers) into using Zcash wallets for shielded transactions.
  • Showcasing privacy at scale — thousands of microtransactions daily, all shielded.
  • Aligning with regulatory compliance by offering GDPR/CCPA-friendly monetization for publishers.

By integrating Zcash at the core of our reward and payout system, we aims to onboard 10,000+ new Zcash wallet users and process over 1 million shielded transactions in its first year — creating a new category of adoption for shielded payments while proving Zcash’s unmatched value in mainstream, privacy-sensitive industries.

I’d love to hear your feedback, questions, and ideas from the community as we explore bringing privacy-preserving digital advertising to the Zcash ecosystem.

Cem

2 Likes
2

Advertising is dubious, but it is clearly important in our world.

something like this:

replaces invasive tracking with blockchain-verified, user-consented ad engagements Each interaction is validated using zero-knowledge proofs to confirm a legitimate click, view or conversion without revealing user data

may be a big improvement over current models of surveillance capitalism, and various ideas like this have been discussed for years… With the advent of shielded zcash being present in Brave Browser, for example, the time may be more ripe - though Brave’s BAT is very close to this idea as well, but with a worse privacy profile?

It would be good to gather more information on similar efforts over the past 10 or so years.

Beyond that, I have some concerns.

  • Is it technically feasible (with the size of the grant and the team building it)? Particularly to “confirm a legitimate click” strikes me as questionable.
  • How will it be integrated in people’s use of technology both on the ad supplier side and the target audience side (if the technology is made, will it be used)?
  • This grant is for $150k which is rather large, in the present time.
  • Shouldn’t market forces motivate to create something like this on their own? Advertising in tech is not a small industry, so why should ZCG fund this, especially when we face current uncertainties.
  • Should ZCG work with advertising in general? There are ethical questions…

To put it politely, in the majority of cases commercial advertising is manipulative: promoting unnecessary desires, and exploiting psychological weaknesses in humans.

In serious power centers such as governments and larger corporations, advertising and PR blend into what can only be called propaganda, with traits like: erosion of critical thinking, spread of disinformation, subversion of democratic processes, justification of harm to or domination of groups of people, and distortion of collective memory (long-term cultural damage).

I am not stating all these things to suggest AdPriva has these aims - in fact, their model might be better than what exists now. But I urge ZCG to think about if we would want to help promote these kinds of activities from the perspective of core personal, community and ‘Zcash brand’ values.

2 Likes
3

Hi,

Thank you for such a thoughtful comment, you’ve raised important points that deserve a clear and detailed reply. I’ll address each in turn so the community understands what is and what it aims to do.

I agree that much of advertising has been invasive, yet it also funds the open web and helps people discover new products and services. The model keeps the good and removes the bad: ads run only in publisher placements, with explicit user consent and every click/view/conversion is privately verified using zero-knowledge proofs so no personal data ever leaves the device. Unlike Brave’s BAT model, which serves browser-level ads and can bypass publishers, it integrates directly with sites and automatically shares revenue.

Our mission is to replace surveillance-based targeting with privacy-first, user-consented engagement. Ads are shown only if the user opts in (and selects categories) or matched contextually to page content without tracking. Users earn crypto rewards for their attention, publishers get a fair share of revenue and advertisers reach real human audiences without profiling, data resale or psychological manipulation.

We’re not claiming a perfect, bot-proof system, that’s unrealistic. For our MVP, “legitimate” means human-initiated, unique and non-replayable. We achieve this through on-device event binding with short-lived nonces, lightweight presence checks for high-value clicks and adaptive proof-of-work for suspicious spikes. Each interaction produces a zero-knowledge proof that the checks occurred, without revealing identity or raw behavioral data. This makes large-scale bot automation costly and keeps users anonymous.

Integration and real-world use:
For publishers: they simply add theTag (similar to Google’s ad tag) into their existing placements. No redesign, no complex setup. it serves ads in the publisher’s own inventory, not as browser overlays, ensuring revenue flows to the site.
For users: they control what categories of ads they see through the ID mobile app, which acts as a private “data vault.” If no preferences are set, ads are matched contextually to the page content via on-device AI, with no tracking or personal data leaving the device. Every verified view, click or conversion earns the user crypto rewards (shielded ZEC by default) paid directly into their app wallet.
For advertisers: they reach real, verified human audiences with zero-knowledge–verified engagements, meaning every paid view or click is proven without revealing identity.

Privacy-first adtech is high-risk and rarely funded by VCs, because it challenges the dominant surveillance-driven model. That’s why ZCG’s milestone-based support is meaningful, it enables us to prove this model works without compromising on privacy.

Finally, I agree that much of the ad industry promotes harmful patterns. our goal is to prove that monetization can happen without exploitation, with privacy, consent and fair compensation built in from the start.

4

As the first person who replied, I’ll let others chime in with more substance: I’ve probably said more than enough.

But thank you for the thoughtful and detailed reply.

I hope having conversations like this, things can become more clear and people can find new, positive avenues with technology.

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hey.

i dont see much info about the team or find about the project. there is a website https://adpriva.com/
with almost no info so i would guess there are no massive amount of users of this yet?

as an idea it does sound interesting.

thanks if you can share more about the team and maybe previous projects the team has built.

1 Like
6

Hi, AdPriva is still early, I’m a solo founder bootstrapping the MVP with help from outsourced developers. The site is minimal right now since the product isn’t live yet. There are no users at this stage (pre-revenue, pre-launch) and that’s exactly what this grant is meant to help us enable.

Before AdPriva, I worked on products like a livescore app, dating app and a gamified NFT app. Those experiences especially with ad mediation, cookie consent, affiliate programs, user payouts and blockchain led me to buid AdPriva.

The idea is to launch, gather publishers and users, share revenue fairly and grow. Over time, with real adoption, we can attract investors but right now the grant support would help us get the MVP live and prove the model.

We see this grant as the right path to validate AdPriva with Zcash at the center. As the project grows, we’re open to broader partnerships and funding models.

1 Like
7

@cmsl thank you for your submission. After consideration from ZCG and sufficient time for the community to provide feedback on the forum, the committee has decided to reject this proposal.

The committee appreciates your grant submission efforts and encourages you to continue as an active member of the Zcash community going forward!

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Thank you for considering our proposal. We respect the committee’s decision and remain committed to building privacy-first solutions. We hope to explore collaboration in the future.

3 Likes
9

Hi everyone, justed wanted to share a quick update that AdPriva’s been selected for a grant from Horizen :rocket:

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10

Hi @zooko quick update since our earlier proposal. We now have AdPriva live with 250+ embedded wallets, ZK-verified ad engagement, and proofs anchored on-chain.

We’re exploring enabling rewards to be received directly into shielded ZEC addresses. Curious whether this kind of integration would be interesting for the Zcash ecosystem.

1 Like