What is it · The infrastructure
UNICITY PROTOCOL STACK
A purpose-built stack where the chain does one thing — prove uniqueness — while agents execute off-chain, bringing assets from any source chain in as bearer tokens.
ZK Uniqueness Oracle
Trustless, permissionless, decentralized infrastructure generating ZK proofs.
Token Operations SDK
Thin client libraries (JS, Java, Rust) bridging off-chain agents to on-chain proofs.
Execution Layer
Fully off-chain, peer-to-peer: transport, messaging (NOSTR), storage, runtime, and verifiable execution.
THE TRILEMMA
On a shared ledger every transaction is public — easy to audit, impossible to keep private. Add cryptography (ZK, FHE) to recover privacy and throughput collapses. Unicity solves this trilemma by introducing bearer instruments.
First we convert shared-ledger tokens to off-chain bearer instruments.
TOKENS AS BEARER OBJECTS
an asset you hold, not a ledger entry the network maintains
SELF-CONTAINED
value lives in the object
SELF-PROVING
carries its own proof
PEER-TO-PEER
moves with no ledger lookup
EVERY TOKEN IS PROGRAMMABLE.
Each token carries its own spending rule — a predicate — so transfers can be conditional.
A Token
carries its own logic
The Condition
A SPENDING RULE
updated by users during transactions
The New Owner
who receives and satisfies the predicate
A Few of the Rules You Can Set
SIGNATURE
one key signs
MULTI-SIG
all n keys sign
THRESHOLD
any k-of-n sign
TIME-LOCK
only after τ₀
UNICITY GENERATES PROOFS OF UNIQUENESS (SINGLE SPEND)
Our invention is a Uniqueness Oracle — decentralized infrastructure that proves the absence of double-spend without seeing transactions.
UNICITY PROVES UNIQUENESS: NOTHING ELSE
Proving no double-spend is the Oracle's only job. Transaction validation, storage and P2P communication are all off-chain — handled with traditional tools, by the parties who care.
Off-chain · Traditional Tools
COMMUNICATION
the asset carries its own proof — the wire just moves bytes
STORAGE
state lives with the owner, not on every node
VALIDATION
the recipient verifies — no validator set in the path
THE INEVITABLE UNBUNDLING OF BLOCKCHAIN.
Each generation of consensus removed work from the network. We took the unbundling to its logical conclusion.
2009
BITCOIN
Correctness + global ordering.
Every node certifies every transaction. Every node agrees on order.
2023
SUI / FASTPAY
Correctness only.
Validators certify correctness. Ordering removed.
2026
UNICITY
Uniqueness only.
The network attests one thing: has this token been spent? Correctness moves to the edge.
TOKENS ARE NATIVE DATA TYPES, NOT LEDGER ENTRIES.
With the ledger gone, the token is a self-contained object — and an object is something an operating system can hold, like a file.
OPERATING SYSTEM
FILE
bytes on disk
PROCESS
running program
SOCKET
network endpoint
TOKEN
value object
FIVE WINS.
ONE HARD PROBLEM.
Every architecture has a cost. Ours buys us five things — and leaves us one hard problem to solve.
SPEED
FAST SETTLEMENT, NO BOTTLENECKS
Tokens move directly between parties at machine speed.
THROUGHPUT
The Oracle never validates transactions. Cost per tx collapses; throughput scales horizontally.
Per Shard
on a single consumer-class CPU · Plonky3 AIR + Poseidon2
Sub-cent · Sub-millicent · Sub-microcent
the Oracle certifies one consistency proof per round — not each transaction
Horizontal Scale
each shard adds another 30K tx/sec · proofs stay succinct
INSIDE THE ORACLE
Why it's cheap. The Oracle never re-executes a transaction — it certifies one prior-state-preservation proof per round: a single SNARK, ~45 ms to verify.
Why it scales. Each shard is independent. No global ordering, no shared validator set, no cross-shard consensus needed.
TOTAL PRIVACY BY DEFAULT
THREE OBSERVERS. NONE CAN LEARN ANYTHING.
Observer 01
THE NETWORK
the Unicity service itself
Sees only opaque commitments — never amounts, parties, or balances.
A request is a hash of a state and a hash of transaction data. The nonce that chains one state to the next is hidden by a perfectly hiding commitment — so the service cannot link two consecutive transactions of the same token.
Observer 02
THE SENDER
the person who paid you
Cannot watch when you later spend what they sent.
Once a token reaches you, the previous owner has no way to compute the registry entry your next spend will create. The next state derives from a secret only you hold. Send it, then they're out.
Observer 03
ANYONE WHO KNOWS YOUR ADDRESS
counterparties, partners, ex-employers
Cannot link two payments to the same recipient — even when both went to you.
You publish one persistent public key. Every sender derives a fresh, indistinguishable transaction key against it. No correlation, no UX overhead, no one-time-address management.
LOCAL VERIFICATION, NOT TRUSTED BRIDGES
A Unicity XPL token — verified straight from Plasma. No bridge to trust.
No Bridge · No Custodian · Nothing to Hack
The Hard Part
ONE HARD PROBLEM:
ATOMICITY.
Free in any shared-state model — the database, the global ledger, the world computer all give it by default. Without shared state, "all or nothing" has to be enforced by the tokens themselves.
IN DEFI, THE ATOMIC OPERATION IS THE SWAP
Two assets change hands at once — both legs, or neither.
Unicity has no shared ledger — so atomicity needs a new paradigm.
that's what predicates solve
THE UNICITY TRUSTLESS ATOMIC SWAP
Both parties commit independently — the swap completes, or everyone keeps their token.
Hashed Timelock (HTLC)
THE TIMING TRAP
B late on step 4 — a dropped connection — and A keeps both.
Unicity Predicate Swap
A COMMITS
locks their token
B COMMITS
locks their token
UNICITY SERVICE
the shared reference
AUTOMATIC FAIRNESS
✓ both locked → swap completes
✓ either walked away → both refunded
✓ no deadlines, no chasing, done
AGENTIC DEFI. AN ECONOMY OF MACHINES.
Frictionless. Massive throughput. Private. Compliant.
A financial system built for machines.
Every DeFi primitive, rebuilt for bearer finance.
AMMs, order books, lending, derivatives — the whole DeFi stack, rebuilt on bearer tokens: self-custodied, private, and compliant by construction. Take a CLOB — CEX speed, DEX custody, private and compliant. Binance has the first, Uniswap the second; Unicity has all three.
THE MATH IS HARDER.
BUT IT'S WORTH IT.
What You Get
A NEW
FINANCIAL SYSTEM.
Massively parallel. Private. Decentralized.
DON'T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT —
HERE'S THE MATH
Three formal papers (LLM Friendly). Every claim is proven and public.
