Privacy is a distribution advantage
Most onchain lending leaks every balance, liquidation point, and borrowing habit. Walnut turns privacy into a reason to join, stay, and build.
Future of private credit
The future oflendingshould notbe publicby default.public by default.
Walnut is the thesis that private credit can become one of the strongest user-acquisition stories in crypto. Better privacy creates better products, better products attract real users, and real users create the traction that turns infrastructure into a category.
Encrypted positions
Collateral, debt, and risk signals stay private.
Composable growth
Built for apps, wallets, and protocol integrations.
Category pull
Private credit can widen who feels comfortable onchain.
Walnut system view
Built for the next wave of onchain users
01
Private collateral
Balances stay encrypted while the protocol still computes limits.
02
Private debt
Borrow activity remains useful to the app without becoming public data.
03
Credit progression
Reputation can compound without exposing financial history.
04
Sealed liquidations
Risk resolution happens without open, extractive bidding surfaces.
The thesis is simple: if onchain finance feels safer and more dignified, more people will use it.
Why this matters
Walnut is not selling privacy as decoration. It is building growth around it.
Better UX creates better retention
When users can borrow without broadcasting their risk profile, the product feels safer, more premium, and closer to how real credit should work.
Products grow when more people can say yes
Walnut is designed for traders, founders, funds, power users, and teams that want onchain leverage without public financial exposure.
The app is only the first surface
The long game is infrastructure: a lending core, encrypted stable balances, private settlement, and developer primitives other products can plug into.
Product expansion
A vision page should feel like a product map, not a slogan wall.
Walnut already has the bones of a bigger platform story: private balances, risk computation, encrypted stable assets, settlement rails, and integration surfaces that can pull in more users over time.
Private credit becomes a category
Walnut makes encrypted borrowing legible to everyday users. The moment private lending feels usable, a new class of DeFi products can form around it.
Capital stops behaving like a public performance
Borrowers should not need to expose collateral size, debt utilization, or changing health factors just to access liquidity onchain.
Risk stays computable without becoming visible
Collateral checks, interest, and credit tiers can still run continuously. Walnut proves the protocol can enforce discipline without exposing the user.
Apps get a cleaner foundation to integrate
Wallets, interfaces, structured credit products, and private treasury tooling can build on Walnut without reinventing encrypted accounting from scratch.
Every new primitive compounds the story
Encrypted collateral, private debt, sealed-bid liquidations, permit-based decryption, and wallet linking are not isolated features. They form a full private credit stack.
The product is built to feel ahead of the market
Walnut is not trying to make old lending prettier. It is trying to make private, programmable credit feel like the obvious next default.
Walnut Beyond the Buildathon
From protocol experiment to durable infrastructure
Walnut started as a protocol experiment. It is becoming infrastructure. The confidential DeFi lending market does not exist yet. Walnut is the earliest production-grade attempt to build it on FHE. What follows is the roadmap to turn that head start into a durable protocol.
Core Partners
Built entirely on Fhenix CoFHE
Private settlement via Privara
Supported by key ecosystem infrastructure partners
Future Milestones
The Roadmap
Phase 1Q3 2025
Mainnet launch
- Deploy on Arbitrum One with real USDC after independent security audit
- Replace MockUSDC with Circle's production contract (address swap, zero code changes)
- Switch to Chainlink mainnet price feeds
- Multisig ownership for all admin functions
- Bug bounty program
Phase 2Q3–Q4 2025
Token expansion
- Add WBTC, WETH, DAI, USDT as supported collateral
- Integrate additional Chainlink feeds as they become available on mainnet
- Tiered collateral factors per token (ETH: 80% LTV, BTC: 75%, stablecoins: 90%)
- Isolated lending markets per collateral type
Phase 3Q4 2025
Multichain
- Deploy on Base, Optimism, and Polygon as CoFHE coprocessor expands
- Unified position management across chains
- Cross-chain collateral bridging (encrypted balances portable across deployments)
Phase 4Q1 2026
Lender yield and protocol economics
- Lender deposit pools go live — suppliers earn 6% base APY (currently only borrow side exists)
- Liquidity mining: early depositors earn protocol fee share for bootstrapping TVL
- Referral system: users who bring verified borrowers earn a cut of their interest — privately tracked on-chain via encrypted counters
- Sealed yield distribution: lender earnings settled privately via Privara, same as borrower interest today
- Protocol treasury accumulates 2% spread between borrow APR (8%) and supply APY (6%)
Phase 5Q2 2026
Institutional rails
- Permissioned pools for institutional depositors with KYC gating
- Auditor permits for compliance teams (pool solvency visible, individual positions never)
- Private credit lines for DAOs and protocols
- Whitelist-based under-collateralized lending for verified institutional borrowers
Phase 6Q3 2026
Full privacy stack
- Client-side amount encryption for true collateral confidentiality (removes trivial encryption constraint)
- Private liquidation notifications — borrowers receive encrypted alerts before health factor breach
- Zero-knowledge identity layer for credit scoring without wallet linking
Capital Allocation
Investment Required
To realize this vision and achieve our first major milestones, we are seeking a seed round. This capital funds our primary operational, security, and growth runways.
Seed Funding Goal
$700,000
Provides an 18-month operational runway to Arbitrum mainnet launch, security certification, and first $10M TVL milestone.
| Area | Amount (USD) | What it funds |
|---|---|---|
| Security audit | $80,000 | Independent audit by Trail of Bits or Spearbit — mandatory before mainnet |
| Legal and compliance | $60,000 | Protocol structure, jurisdiction, regulatory clarity for lending products |
| Core team | $300,000 / yr | 2 engineers + 1 business co-founder salaries (18-month runway) |
| User acquisition | $120,000 | Liquidity mining, referral rewards, community building |
| Infrastructure | $30,000 / yr | RPC nodes, monitoring, DevOps, Vercel Pro |
| Marketing and BD | $80,000 | Protocol partnerships, DeFi integrations, ecosystem presence |
| Bug bounty | $30,000 | Immunefi program to surface vulnerabilities before they are exploited |
| Total seed ask | $700,000 | 18 months to mainnet + first $10M TVL milestone |
For Investors
Addressing a $50 billion opaque market
The DeFi lending market holds $50 billion in TVL today — all of it on transparent rails that leak position data to MEV bots and block institutional participation. Walnut addresses both.
A 1% capture of the existing lending market puts protocol TVL at $500 million. At a 2% annualized spread, that is $10 million in annual protocol revenue — profitable from the day TVL crosses $50 million, which is achievable within 12 months of mainnet launch with the right liquidity incentives.
The first $700K gets Walnut through audit, onto mainnet, and to the point where the protocol earns more than it costs to run. Every dollar after that is growth.
DeFi Lending TVL
$50B
Transparent rails leak positions
1% Target Capture
$500M
Confidential institutional TVL
Annualized Spread
2%
Spread between borrow and supply
Annual Revenue Goal
$10M
At $500M TVL milestone
Join the Team
Co-founder Wanted
This protocol was designed and built solely by me(Jayant). The technical foundation is complete. What it needs now is someone who understands go-to-market, institutional BD, and can turn a working protocol into a funded company.
If you have experience in DeFi growth, protocol economics, or fintech sales and believe private on-chain lending is the next category — let's talk.
$700K in seed funding and the right co-founder makes Walnut unstoppable.
Closing thought
Walnut is building for the moment private finance stops feeling contradictory.
The strongest future for Walnut is not just another lending front end. It is a product and protocol layer that makes private financial behavior normal onchain, then benefits from every new user and every new app that wants that experience.
Private lending on Fhenix
Built to prove that onchain credit can be useful, enforceable, and private at the same time.