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TACEO Collaborate Privately, Prove Publicly
TACEO
Company Overview.
Description.
TACEO is a privacy infrastructure company headquartered in Graz, Austria, that provides an MPC-powered network and cryptographic services enabling confidential finance, identity verification, and agent commerce on public blockchain rails. The company was co-founded by cryptography researchers from TU Graz — including Prof. Christian Rechberger (co-designer of the Poseidon hash function), Daniel Kales (CTO), Roman Walch (Lead Cryptographer), Lukas Helminger (CEO), Lukas Götz (CPO), and Stefan Plank (COO) — alongside a team of 20+ cryptographers and engineers. TACEO's technology co-architected the protocol now running World's iris-code identity system at global production scale, and its TACEO Network has processed over 1 million requests as of June 2026.
Key Infrastructure.
The network powers Merces confidential payments, identity verification, and all TACEO privacy services.
Nodes hold encrypted shares of user balances and collaboratively generate coSNARK zero-knowledge proofs that are verified on-chain before any state transition is accepted, ensuring no unauthorized or tampered state can be introduced.
Over 1 million requests have been processed on the network.
The system batches hundreds of transactions every few seconds through the TACEO MPC network, generating collaborative zero-knowledge proofs (coSNARKs) that verify senders had sufficient funds and balances were updated correctly.
Deployed on Base testnet demonstrating ~200 TPS throughput comparable to PayPal, with fully private transfers concealing both participants and amounts in development.
The coSNARK is verified by an on-chain contract before new cryptographic commitments are accepted, providing global public verifiability while maintaining per-transaction confidentiality.
Developer tools include coCircom (Circom-compatible) and coNoir for writing privacy-preserving circuits.
The identity layer uses privacy-preserving nullifiers generated via TACEO:OPRF to create persistent, unlinkable identifiers that prevent Sybil attacks while maintaining user privacy.
This infrastructure demonstrates TACEO's ability to operate privacy-preserving cryptographic systems at planet-scale with real-world user volumes.
TACEO:OPRF generates persistent unlinkable identifiers for private recognition without exposing user data.
TACEO:OMap enables private key-value storage and retrieval on encrypted data for shared state.
TACEO:Proof outsources zero-knowledge and coSNARK proof generation to the MPC network.
TACEO:Match computes private set intersections and joins across parties without revealing underlying records — enabling compliant fraud detection, sanctions screening, and counterparty verification in private contexts.
Confidential x402 wraps HTTP 402 payment flows in private balances, allowing autonomous agents to conduct commerce at machine scale while keeping their financial activity hidden from competitors and market observers.
This extends privacy from human-to-human payments into the emerging agent-to-agent and agent-to-service economy built on public blockchain rails.
Additional Features.
General Questions.
TACEO provides a multi-party computation (MPC) powered privacy network and cryptographic services that enable confidential stablecoin payments, identity verification, and AI agent commerce on public blockchain rails. Its flagship product, Merces, wraps existing ERC-20 tokens into private balances using collaborative zero-knowledge proofs (coSNARKs) generated by a decentralized MPC network — hiding transaction amounts from public observers while maintaining on-chain verifiability. The company also offers four production-ready cryptographic services (OPRF, OMap, Proof, Match) for applications needing private recognition, encrypted lookups, outsourced proof generation, and private set intersection capabilities.
TACEO's primary deployed client is World (formerly Worldcoin), for which TACEO co-architected the protocol running the iris-code identity system at global production scale. The company also collaborates with Aztec on private shared state for Ethereum. Merces is currently a public demo on Base testnet targeting fintechs, payment platforms, and enterprises that need confidential stablecoin settlement. The TACEO Network is open for node operators and the services are callable by any application.
TACEO GmbH is registered in Austria. Specific financial or cryptographic technology licenses are not publicly disclosed. The company operates as cryptographic software infrastructure — the MPC network is non-custodial by design, with no single node or TACEO itself able to unilaterally access or move user funds. Compliance primitives including selective auditability and regulatory disclosure mechanisms are built into Merces.
Merces is deployed on Base testnet and designed for EVM-compatible chains. It wraps ERC-20 tokens (USDC, USDT, and others) into private balances. The TACEO Network is blockchain-agnostic at the infrastructure layer — the MPC and coSNARK architecture can integrate with any public blockchain. Private Shared State work with Aztec focuses on Ethereum mainnet integration. The identity infrastructure operates globally through World's production deployment.
