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UMBRA Incognito mode for your money
UMBRA
Company Overview.
Description.
Umbra is a financial privacy protocol built on Solana, developed by Phoenix DAO LLC — a limited liability company registered in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The protocol enables confidential, unlinkable, and auditable token transfers by combining shielded commitments, encrypted balances, and zero-knowledge proofs into a unified, permissionless system. Umbra functions as a non-custodial protocol: users connect self-custodied Solana wallets, retain full control of private keys, and interact directly with autonomous on-chain smart contracts. The platform provides a web app at app.umbraprivacy.com offering Shield, Private Swap, Private Send, Withdraw, and Bridge functionality, all with zero shielding fees.
Key Infrastructure.
These UTXO-style commitments are later claimed using zero-knowledge proofs that demonstrate entitlement without revealing sender identity, recipient address, or transaction amounts.
A nullifier system prevents double-spending while Merkle tree state is maintained on-chain for verifiable proof inclusion.
Following each valid deposit or claim, encrypted balances are updated autonomously through decentralized multiparty computation (MPC) using Arcium's Cerberus protocol.
Users' encrypted balances are stored as ciphertext within program-derived addresses, decryptable only by the user who possesses the corresponding private decryption keypair through Rescue-based symmetric encryption designed for MPC efficiency.
The proof system uses Poseidon hash functions over the BN254 254-bit prime field with S-box x86 configuration targeting 128-bit security.
Proof validity is cryptographically verified on-chain and nullifier uniqueness is enforced before state transitions occur, ensuring mathematically sound privacy guarantees with provable security bounds against pre-image and collision attacks.
This architecture abstracts network fees away from the user's funding address and prevents linkage between the sending and receiving addresses.
Relayers never custody funds, modify transactions, or control execution outcomes, and users retain complete control over transaction contents throughout the submission lifecycle.
Users can generate and register viewing keys that allow authorized third parties to decrypt transaction history and balances without exposing data to the public.
The protocol does not maintain global or master viewing keys and has no inherent access to confidential transaction data, ensuring that privacy is the default while auditability remains available when users choose to grant it through cryptographic authorization.
The SDK enables private peer-to-peer payments, shielded in-app transactions, confidential user balances, and private DeFi interactions without requiring users to leave the developer's platform.
Designed for composability, the SDK allows applications to support any feature natively available within Umbra, turning the protocol into a foundational privacy layer for the entire Solana ecosystem.
Additional Features.
General Questions.
Umbra is a non-custodial privacy protocol on Solana that enables confidential, unlinkable, and auditable token transfers. Users can shield assets, execute private swaps, send anonymous payments, and bridge assets — all while keeping transaction amounts and linkages hidden from public blockchain observers. The protocol combines shielded commitments stored in a unified mixer pool, encrypted token accounts maintained through MPC, and zero-knowledge proofs for authorization. Developers can integrate Umbra's privacy features into their own applications via an SDK, making it a foundational privacy layer for the Solana ecosystem.
Umbra is a permissionless, open protocol with no enterprise client onboarding. Its end users are individuals seeking transaction privacy on Solana, while its developer clients are any Solana dApp builders who integrate the privacy SDK. The protocol does not publicly name specific applications built on top of it, though 10,519 individuals participated in its ICO. Helius Labs accepted Umbra into its accelerator program.
Umbra is developed by Phoenix DAO LLC, a company registered in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The Terms of Service explicitly state: "Umbra does not act as a broker, custodian, financial institution, payment processor, or regulated service provider." The protocol is non-custodial — it never holds user assets — and does not maintain user accounts or require identity verification. The company asserts it does not require money transmission licenses because of its non-custodial architecture, though this position has not been tested by regulators.
Umbra operates exclusively on Solana. It supports SOL and all SPL tokens (including USDC, USDT, and any token issued on Solana's token standard). The protocol's cryptographic foundation uses Poseidon hash functions over the BN254 254-bit prime field with 128-bit security, Rescue-based encryption for MPC-friendly operations, and zero-knowledge proofs for transaction authorization.
