General
What is Z? Z is the agent interaction layer, where humans and agents can think, act, and earn privately. Anyone can access unbiased AI through Z and will then be able to deploy agents to act reliably, autonomously, and privately through a vertically integrated system of agent utilities. What is shipping at phase one and what is deferred? Z Inference will be live first, allowing all users to access private, unbiased AI. Shortly after, the full Z platform will launch, including reliability checks for agents, a sovereign ledger, and a suite of utilities to promote reliable, autonomous, and private agentic action. Where are the ShieldedPool, Z Trade, and Z Lend deployed? They are deployed as smart contracts on Z. Is Z a rollup? No. Z is being built as a sovereign ledger with its own consensus mechanism (Zcash Satoshi Plus) and its own validator network.Privacy
Does Z see my prompts? On Tiers 1, 2, and 3, the gateway sees prompts in plaintext but does not retain them (Zero Data Retention). On Tier 4, the gateway cannot see prompts. The request is end-to-end encrypted between the client and the TEE node, and the gateway holds no decryption key. What is the difference between Tier 3 and Tier 4? Tier 3 runs inference inside a hardware-attested enclave. The attestation chain is verified before any payload is dispatched, and the response is bound to the attested execution. The gateway sees the prompt in plaintext on Tier 3. Tier 4 is end-to-end encrypted: the gateway sees only ciphertext. For workloads where the gateway must be cryptographically unable to see content, Tier 4 is the answer. Can I trust that a Tier 3 or Tier 4 response really came from an attested enclave? Yes, independently. The attestation chain is verifiable by anyone with the hardware vendor’s tooling. The gateway exposes the raw quote for independent verification. What about the ShieldedPool? The ShieldedPool uses zero-knowledge proofs to make balances, transfers, and asset types within the pool cryptographically hidden. An outside observer can see that pool transactions occurred but not what they were. Viewing keys allow voluntary, scoped disclosure (to an accountant, a regulator, an auditor) without revealing more than the scope authorizes. Is privacy mandatory? No. Privacy is opt-in, through tier selection on inference and through the ShieldedPool for on-chain assets.Payment
What are the supported payment methods? Three rails feed a single credit pool: Stripe (fiat top-ups and subscriptions), x402 (per-request on-chain payment with USDC on Base or Solana), and MPP (pre-authorized session payments via Stripe PaymentIntents). What is Zero Completion Insurance? ZCI is a first-class billing primitive: if a request fails to produce a valid completion for any reason inside Z’s control, the hold is released to zero charge. ZCI is not a refund policy and does not require a support request. It applies on every settlement rail. Why is Tier 4 not available on subscriptions? Tier 4 settlement uses the silicon-signedz_metadata trailer and bypasses the credit system. Bundling it into a subscription would require a separate billing path that does not exist. Subscription users access Tier 4 by linking a wallet to their account.