Intmax

INTMAX is a stateless Layer 2 payment protocol on Ethereum that combines rollup and Plasma mechanisms with zero-knowledge proofs to deliver private digital transfers. By shifting data storage and execution to the client side, the protocol requires posting only 4 to 5 bytes of nullifier data on-chain per transaction.

Team and development

The network was developed by Ryodan Systems AG, a company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. It was co-founded by Chief Executive Officer Leona Hioki alongside co-founder Mai Fujimoto. The engineering team designed the architecture to remove the need for standard Layer 2 consensus, instead deferring final consensus security directly to Ethereum Layer 1.

How the protocol works

Unlike standard optimistic or ZK rollups that record complete state transitions on-chain, INTMAX handles validation client-side. The network is stateless and operates without centralized sequencers. Instead, permissionless block producers aggregate user transaction proofs and publish concise cryptographic commitments directly to Ethereum. Because user balances and transfer histories are stored locally on individual devices rather than in a shared public ledger, account states remain concealed from third parties.

Complementary infrastructure includes the INTMAX Wallet, which incorporates multi-party computation (MPC) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to allow link-based token transfers. For merchant use cases, the ecosystem includes Payless, a settlement layer designed for point-of-sale and online payments.

Fees and token mechanics

Because on-chain transaction data is constrained to a few bytes, transfer gas overhead on Ethereum is minimal. The native utility asset is the ITX token. Users who generate and submit valid zero-knowledge proofs for private transfers participate in Privacy Mining, earning ITX rewards according to protocol settlement rules.

Milestones and limitations

The INTMAX mainnet deployed on Ethereum on June 26, 2025to support confidential single and batch transfers. Subsequent protocol developments introduced INTMAX3 multi-party payment channel models and lattice-based cryptographic commitments intended for post-quantum transaction privacy.

The system is specialized for transfers rather than general-purpose decentralized computation. It does not offer general EVM smart contract execution, meaning decentralized finance applications built for the EVM cannot deploy natively without tailored protocol integrations. Additionally, users retain personal responsibility for keeping client-side state data, shifting recovery assumptions entirely to the device level.