Online advertising was supposed to connect brands with interested customers. Instead, it became a surveillance machine, tracking users across the web, hoarding personal data, and running on metrics that are trivially faked and nearly impossible to audit. Advertisers pay for phantom clicks. Publishers lose revenue to fraud. Users get stalked by ads for products they browsed once, three years ago.
The industry's response? More tracking, more fingerprinting, more opaque middlemen. Privacy solutions exist, but most either break publisher monetization or just shuffle the surveillance around.
But what if advertising could be rebuilt on proof instead of trust? What if every impression, every click, every conversion could be cryptographically verified without tracking a single user?
Meet AdPriva, a team rethinking digital advertising from first principles. Using zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic receipts, AdPriva makes every ad event verifiable while keeping users completely private.
Q: In plain language, what is AdPriva, and what's the single biggest "broken thing" in online advertising you're fixing first?
A: AdPriva serves ads without tracking users. Publishers earn from real attention and advertisers get metrics they can independently verify.
The first thing we fix is this: today's ad metrics are easy to fake and almost impossible to audit. We make every ad event verifiable.
Q: You say "no cookies, no tracking" yet advertisers still need measurement. What replaces tracking in AdPriva, step by step, from impression to conversion?
A: We replace tracking with verifiable event receipts:
Serve: An ad is selected using page context and privacy rules, and a proof record is created immediately ("proof on serve").
Impression / viewability: When the ad is shown, the server verifies the impression or viewability event and updates the proof.
Click: Clicks go through AdPriva via a server side redirect, are verified, rate limited, and enriched with antifraud signals.
Conversion (when added): The advertiser sends a conversion signal that references a click or proof (or an onchain anchored receipt), enabling attribution without any cross site identifier.
Verification: Proofs (or cryptographic commitments to them) can be publicly checked in the AdPriva Explorer.
Q: What do you want to say directly to the Horizen community about why this matters, and what kind of support or collaboration would help most right now?
A: To the Horizen community:
Horizen is built around a simple idea: systems where truth can be proven, not just claimed. AdPriva brings that principle to one of the web's most broken systems, digital advertising.
Today's ads rely on surveillance and opaque middlemen. AdPriva replaces that with cryptographic proofs that make ad delivery verifiable from impression to conversion, without tracking people.
That means:
Publishers can prove the authenticity of their inventory
Advertisers can verify real outcomes, not bot traffic
Users get privacy by default
We're building verifiable infrastructure, not another ad product.
How the community can help right now:
Infra & ecosystem alignment: Best practices for anchoring and verifying proofs at scale
Builder collaboration: Tooling for verification, dashboards, and auditability
Go to market intros: Publishers, DSP/SSP teams, and partners interested in piloting proof backed inventory
We believe Horizen is the right ecosystem to bring verifiable advertising into the real world.
Q: Your docs mention that every event becomes a cryptographic proof and can be checked in a public "Explorer" verification hub. What does the Explorer show, and what can independent parties verify there?
A: The Explorer is a public verification view for proof backed ad events.
It shows: proof ID or commitment, timestamps, event type (serve / impression / click / verified), campaign and creative identifiers (non PII), and verification status. This creates a tamper evident, idempotent chain of state transitions (serve → impression → click).
Independent parties can verify that:
An event existed at a specific time, wasn't altered, and followed expected lifecycle rules
Cryptographic signatures and bindings are valid (proof ↔️ creative ↔️ ad placement ↔️ website ↔️ campaign)
Aggregate metrics (counts, rates) match published commitments without revealing any user identity
Q: You introduced BIPs (Bounded Interaction Proofs) as "cryptographic receipts" rather than speculative tokens. Why design it that way, and how do BIPs connect to real payouts?
A: Because the goal is accounting and trust, not speculation.
BIPs (Bounded Interaction Proofs) are cryptographic receipts that prove a real, policy compliant engagement happened: an impression, click, or conversion. They are not tokens to trade.
This avoids the problems tokens introduce in advertising: volatility, regulatory risk, and incentives drifting away from real performance.
How BIPs connect to payouts:
Programmatic / DSP campaigns (fiat): Advertisers keep paying DSPs (Demand Side Platforms, the software advertisers use to buy ad inventory automatically) in fiat as usual. AdPriva attaches BIPs to impressions and clicks at the publisher/SSP layer, enabling fraud free reconciliation and audits without tracking users.
Direct, affiliate, or reward based campaigns (stablecoins): When campaigns are funded in stablecoins, a valid BIP directly triggers automated payouts to publishers and users.
In short: BIPs replace trust assumptions with proof. Sometimes they support reconciliation, sometimes they unlock payouts, but they are never speculative assets.
Q: Advertisers only want to pay for real humans. How does AdPriva exclude bots and fraud "by design," and what kinds of fraud patterns are you targeting first?
A: AdPriva excludes fraud by design, not by surveillance.
Instead of guessing whether traffic is "human," AdPriva only allows cryptographically verifiable ad events to be billable. Every impression or click must be tied to a valid, time bound proof created and verified server side. If an event can't be proven, it doesn't count.
Bots can generate traffic, but they can't forge valid proofs. And without a proof, there is no payment.
We target the most common fraud first: replay attacks, click spam, redirect hijacking, fake inventory, and affiliate abuse. These fail because proofs are single use, context bound, nonreplayable, and verified before settlement.
We don't claim perfect bot detection, as that would require surveillance. Instead, we guarantee something stronger: advertisers only pay for what can be cryptographically proven.
Q: You say ZK proofs are the verification mechanism itself, not privacy bolted onto a surveillance system. What's the key insight behind that architecture?
A: AdPriva's key insight is that verification does not require exposure.
Traditional ad tech is surveillance first: it tracks users everywhere, then tries to anonymize the data later. Privacy becomes a patch.
We invert that. Instead of collecting user data, we collect only the cryptographic proof needed to verify an ad event happened correctly. Zero knowledge proofs let us prove impressions, clicks, and aggregate counts without ever seeing or storing personal data.
Verification is the product, not a privacy add on. We don't collect data and then hide it. We collect proof instead.
Q: Many teams claim "privacy preserving ads," but most end up with trade offs. What trade offs did you accept, and which ones did you refuse to accept?
A: What we accepted:
No cross site behavioral targeting. Relevance comes from page context and user chosen preferences, not hidden profiles.
Cold starts. New pages and sessions start with less signal. We mitigate with caching and fast contextual analysis, never tracking.
Simpler, provable metrics. We favor metrics that can be verified over complex engagement scores that rely on opaque inference.
What we refused:
No fingerprinting or covert identifiers. If it isn't user visible and consensual, it doesn't exist.
No breaking publisher monetization. No overlays, injected ads, or hijacked inventory.
No black box reporting. If a metric can't be independently audited, it isn't used for settlement.
Bottom line: most "privacy ads" trade off truth, revenue, or compliance. We rejected that triangle.
Q: Your FAQ says you can run campaigns through existing DSPs. How do you integrate without forcing advertisers to change their workflow?
A: Advertisers continue using their preferred DSPs exactly as they do today. No changes to planning, buying, or payment flows.
AdPriva integrates at the publisher/SSP (Supply Side Platform) layer, where impressions and clicks occur. As these events happen, we attach cryptographic proof that the interaction was valid and human, without tracking users.
DSPs continue handling bidding, reporting, and fiat settlement as usual. AdPriva simply adds an independent verification layer.
Same DSPs, same workflows, now with cryptographically verifiable outcomes.
Q: Publishers are promised "proof backed inventory" and better earnings. What changes for publishers, and how do you prevent "proof gaming"?
A: AdPriva is a seamless upgrade, not a replacement.
Publishers integrate AdPriva the same way they integrate any SSP tag today. From that point on, impressions and clicks are verified at the source and recorded as proof backed events. Publishers get dashboards showing verifiable impressions, viewability, and clicks. Privacy rules are enforced automatically.
Nothing else changes. Ad servers, SSPs, header bidding, demand partners, billing, and payments continue as before.
Proof gaming is prevented because events are verified server side and bound to a specific ad, placement, and context. Proofs are signed, time limited, and nonreplayable. Rate limits block artificial traffic. Only cryptographically verified events are billable, and all proofs are auditable in the Explorer.
Q: You've mentioned seamless USDC rewards and a partnership with Privy. How are rewards delivered simply for mainstream users?
A: The process is designed for people who've never touched crypto.
Users sign in with email, Google, or Apple via Privy. An embedded wallet is created automatically in the background. No seed phrases, extensions, or setup.
Rewards are credited automatically. Users don't need to "claim" anything just to get paid. When they want to use or withdraw their balance, they can do so in one click.
Q: Who is the team behind AdPriva, and what's been the hardest moment so far?
A: AdPriva is founder led by Cem Sel, supported by lean expert partners across cryptography, zero knowledge infrastructure, wallet authentication, and security auditing.
Cem has spent over a decade building and monetizing digital products used by millions across sports media, affiliate marketing, and Web3. In every role, he saw the same problem: advertising depends on surveillance, fraud is tolerated because attribution can't be verified, and "privacy tools" often worsen UX while spreading data further.
Web3 showed him a different model: transparent rewards for real actions without hidden tracking. Existing solutions like Brave protected users but bypassed publishers. That felt like surrender.
AdPriva was born from a different belief: we can fix advertising from within by replacing tracking with cryptographic proof.
The hardest challenge hasn't been ideas. It's discipline. Choosing correctness over shortcuts. Shipping infrastructure that must be bulletproof on day one.
Q: Why build this on the Horizen + zkVerify stack, and what would you like others to build on top?
A: We chose Horizen because it's built for verifiable truth, not just transaction speed. AdPriva's core innovation isn't a token. It's a system of cryptographic proofs.
Horizen's zkVerify stack lets us verify offchain ad event proofs at scale, anchor them to a neutral, tamper proof ledger, and keep sensitive logic offchain while still proving correctness. That combination of scalability, neutrality, and architectural separation is hard to get elsewhere.
We see AdPriva as a primitive for verifiable digital interactions. On top of it, Horizen builders can create independent analytics, audit and compliance tools, proof based reputation systems, and new trust layers.
Our goal is to make advertising the first large scale proof based system and invite the Horizen ecosystem to build what comes next.
Keep up with the latest updates from AdPriva:
🌐 Website: https://adpriva.com/
𝕏 Twitter: https://x.com/AdPrivaAds
Want to get involved? If you're a publisher exploring proof-backed inventory, an advertiser tired of paying for phantom clicks, or a builder interested in verifiable infrastructure, reach out to the AdPriva team. The era of surveillance advertising doesn't have to continue.
Stay tuned for the next Project Showcase as we continue to highlight the teams building on Horizen.
Online advertising was supposed to connect brands with interested customers. Instead, it became a surveillance machine, tracking users across the web, hoarding personal data, and running on metrics that are trivially faked and nearly impossible to audit. Advertisers pay for phantom clicks. Publishers lose revenue to fraud. Users get stalked by ads for products they browsed once, three years ago.
The industry's response? More tracking, more fingerprinting, more opaque middlemen. Privacy solutions exist, but most either break publisher monetization or just shuffle the surveillance around.
But what if advertising could be rebuilt on proof instead of trust? What if every impression, every click, every conversion could be cryptographically verified without tracking a single user?
Meet AdPriva, a team rethinking digital advertising from first principles. Using zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic receipts, AdPriva makes every ad event verifiable while keeping users completely private.
Q: In plain language, what is AdPriva, and what's the single biggest "broken thing" in online advertising you're fixing first?
A: AdPriva serves ads without tracking users. Publishers earn from real attention and advertisers get metrics they can independently verify.
The first thing we fix is this: today's ad metrics are easy to fake and almost impossible to audit. We make every ad event verifiable.
Q: You say "no cookies, no tracking" yet advertisers still need measurement. What replaces tracking in AdPriva, step by step, from impression to conversion?
A: We replace tracking with verifiable event receipts:
Serve: An ad is selected using page context and privacy rules, and a proof record is created immediately ("proof on serve").
Impression / viewability: When the ad is shown, the server verifies the impression or viewability event and updates the proof.
Click: Clicks go through AdPriva via a server side redirect, are verified, rate limited, and enriched with antifraud signals.
Conversion (when added): The advertiser sends a conversion signal that references a click or proof (or an onchain anchored receipt), enabling attribution without any cross site identifier.
Verification: Proofs (or cryptographic commitments to them) can be publicly checked in the AdPriva Explorer.
Q: What do you want to say directly to the Horizen community about why this matters, and what kind of support or collaboration would help most right now?
A: To the Horizen community:
Horizen is built around a simple idea: systems where truth can be proven, not just claimed. AdPriva brings that principle to one of the web's most broken systems, digital advertising.
Today's ads rely on surveillance and opaque middlemen. AdPriva replaces that with cryptographic proofs that make ad delivery verifiable from impression to conversion, without tracking people.
That means:
Publishers can prove the authenticity of their inventory
Advertisers can verify real outcomes, not bot traffic
Users get privacy by default
We're building verifiable infrastructure, not another ad product.
How the community can help right now:
Infra & ecosystem alignment: Best practices for anchoring and verifying proofs at scale
Builder collaboration: Tooling for verification, dashboards, and auditability
Go to market intros: Publishers, DSP/SSP teams, and partners interested in piloting proof backed inventory
We believe Horizen is the right ecosystem to bring verifiable advertising into the real world.
Q: Your docs mention that every event becomes a cryptographic proof and can be checked in a public "Explorer" verification hub. What does the Explorer show, and what can independent parties verify there?
A: The Explorer is a public verification view for proof backed ad events.
It shows: proof ID or commitment, timestamps, event type (serve / impression / click / verified), campaign and creative identifiers (non PII), and verification status. This creates a tamper evident, idempotent chain of state transitions (serve → impression → click).
Independent parties can verify that:
An event existed at a specific time, wasn't altered, and followed expected lifecycle rules
Cryptographic signatures and bindings are valid (proof ↔️ creative ↔️ ad placement ↔️ website ↔️ campaign)
Aggregate metrics (counts, rates) match published commitments without revealing any user identity
Q: You introduced BIPs (Bounded Interaction Proofs) as "cryptographic receipts" rather than speculative tokens. Why design it that way, and how do BIPs connect to real payouts?
A: Because the goal is accounting and trust, not speculation.
BIPs (Bounded Interaction Proofs) are cryptographic receipts that prove a real, policy compliant engagement happened: an impression, click, or conversion. They are not tokens to trade.
This avoids the problems tokens introduce in advertising: volatility, regulatory risk, and incentives drifting away from real performance.
How BIPs connect to payouts:
Programmatic / DSP campaigns (fiat): Advertisers keep paying DSPs (Demand Side Platforms, the software advertisers use to buy ad inventory automatically) in fiat as usual. AdPriva attaches BIPs to impressions and clicks at the publisher/SSP layer, enabling fraud free reconciliation and audits without tracking users.
Direct, affiliate, or reward based campaigns (stablecoins): When campaigns are funded in stablecoins, a valid BIP directly triggers automated payouts to publishers and users.
In short: BIPs replace trust assumptions with proof. Sometimes they support reconciliation, sometimes they unlock payouts, but they are never speculative assets.
Q: Advertisers only want to pay for real humans. How does AdPriva exclude bots and fraud "by design," and what kinds of fraud patterns are you targeting first?
A: AdPriva excludes fraud by design, not by surveillance.
Instead of guessing whether traffic is "human," AdPriva only allows cryptographically verifiable ad events to be billable. Every impression or click must be tied to a valid, time bound proof created and verified server side. If an event can't be proven, it doesn't count.
Bots can generate traffic, but they can't forge valid proofs. And without a proof, there is no payment.
We target the most common fraud first: replay attacks, click spam, redirect hijacking, fake inventory, and affiliate abuse. These fail because proofs are single use, context bound, nonreplayable, and verified before settlement.
We don't claim perfect bot detection, as that would require surveillance. Instead, we guarantee something stronger: advertisers only pay for what can be cryptographically proven.
Q: You say ZK proofs are the verification mechanism itself, not privacy bolted onto a surveillance system. What's the key insight behind that architecture?
A: AdPriva's key insight is that verification does not require exposure.
Traditional ad tech is surveillance first: it tracks users everywhere, then tries to anonymize the data later. Privacy becomes a patch.
We invert that. Instead of collecting user data, we collect only the cryptographic proof needed to verify an ad event happened correctly. Zero knowledge proofs let us prove impressions, clicks, and aggregate counts without ever seeing or storing personal data.
Verification is the product, not a privacy add on. We don't collect data and then hide it. We collect proof instead.
Q: Many teams claim "privacy preserving ads," but most end up with trade offs. What trade offs did you accept, and which ones did you refuse to accept?
A: What we accepted:
No cross site behavioral targeting. Relevance comes from page context and user chosen preferences, not hidden profiles.
Cold starts. New pages and sessions start with less signal. We mitigate with caching and fast contextual analysis, never tracking.
Simpler, provable metrics. We favor metrics that can be verified over complex engagement scores that rely on opaque inference.
What we refused:
No fingerprinting or covert identifiers. If it isn't user visible and consensual, it doesn't exist.
No breaking publisher monetization. No overlays, injected ads, or hijacked inventory.
No black box reporting. If a metric can't be independently audited, it isn't used for settlement.
Bottom line: most "privacy ads" trade off truth, revenue, or compliance. We rejected that triangle.
Q: Your FAQ says you can run campaigns through existing DSPs. How do you integrate without forcing advertisers to change their workflow?
A: Advertisers continue using their preferred DSPs exactly as they do today. No changes to planning, buying, or payment flows.
AdPriva integrates at the publisher/SSP (Supply Side Platform) layer, where impressions and clicks occur. As these events happen, we attach cryptographic proof that the interaction was valid and human, without tracking users.
DSPs continue handling bidding, reporting, and fiat settlement as usual. AdPriva simply adds an independent verification layer.
Same DSPs, same workflows, now with cryptographically verifiable outcomes.
Q: Publishers are promised "proof backed inventory" and better earnings. What changes for publishers, and how do you prevent "proof gaming"?
A: AdPriva is a seamless upgrade, not a replacement.
Publishers integrate AdPriva the same way they integrate any SSP tag today. From that point on, impressions and clicks are verified at the source and recorded as proof backed events. Publishers get dashboards showing verifiable impressions, viewability, and clicks. Privacy rules are enforced automatically.
Nothing else changes. Ad servers, SSPs, header bidding, demand partners, billing, and payments continue as before.
Proof gaming is prevented because events are verified server side and bound to a specific ad, placement, and context. Proofs are signed, time limited, and nonreplayable. Rate limits block artificial traffic. Only cryptographically verified events are billable, and all proofs are auditable in the Explorer.
Q: You've mentioned seamless USDC rewards and a partnership with Privy. How are rewards delivered simply for mainstream users?
A: The process is designed for people who've never touched crypto.
Users sign in with email, Google, or Apple via Privy. An embedded wallet is created automatically in the background. No seed phrases, extensions, or setup.
Rewards are credited automatically. Users don't need to "claim" anything just to get paid. When they want to use or withdraw their balance, they can do so in one click.
Q: Who is the team behind AdPriva, and what's been the hardest moment so far?
A: AdPriva is founder led by Cem Sel, supported by lean expert partners across cryptography, zero knowledge infrastructure, wallet authentication, and security auditing.
Cem has spent over a decade building and monetizing digital products used by millions across sports media, affiliate marketing, and Web3. In every role, he saw the same problem: advertising depends on surveillance, fraud is tolerated because attribution can't be verified, and "privacy tools" often worsen UX while spreading data further.
Web3 showed him a different model: transparent rewards for real actions without hidden tracking. Existing solutions like Brave protected users but bypassed publishers. That felt like surrender.
AdPriva was born from a different belief: we can fix advertising from within by replacing tracking with cryptographic proof.
The hardest challenge hasn't been ideas. It's discipline. Choosing correctness over shortcuts. Shipping infrastructure that must be bulletproof on day one.
Q: Why build this on the Horizen + zkVerify stack, and what would you like others to build on top?
A: We chose Horizen because it's built for verifiable truth, not just transaction speed. AdPriva's core innovation isn't a token. It's a system of cryptographic proofs.
Horizen's zkVerify stack lets us verify offchain ad event proofs at scale, anchor them to a neutral, tamper proof ledger, and keep sensitive logic offchain while still proving correctness. That combination of scalability, neutrality, and architectural separation is hard to get elsewhere.
We see AdPriva as a primitive for verifiable digital interactions. On top of it, Horizen builders can create independent analytics, audit and compliance tools, proof based reputation systems, and new trust layers.
Our goal is to make advertising the first large scale proof based system and invite the Horizen ecosystem to build what comes next.
Keep up with the latest updates from AdPriva:
🌐 Website: https://adpriva.com/
𝕏 Twitter: https://x.com/AdPrivaAds
Want to get involved? If you're a publisher exploring proof-backed inventory, an advertiser tired of paying for phantom clicks, or a builder interested in verifiable infrastructure, reach out to the AdPriva team. The era of surveillance advertising doesn't have to continue.
Stay tuned for the next Project Showcase as we continue to highlight the teams building on Horizen.
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Horizen BlogBuild Smarter dApps with Real-Time Data on Horizen
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A new chapter for onchain privacy begins today. Horizen has officially launched its mainnet on Base, bringing a practical and compliance-friendly path to private onchain activity - one that fits seamlessly into the Ethereum environment millions already use. This launch completes our transition from an isolated proof-of-work chain to a fully EVM-native chain that settles to Ethereum. For everyday users, this shift means faster transactions, lower fees, and access to tools and apps that feel fa...
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A new chapter for onchain privacy begins today. Horizen has officially launched its mainnet on Base, bringing a practical and compliance-friendly path to private onchain activity - one that fits seamlessly into the Ethereum environment millions already use. This launch completes our transition from an isolated proof-of-work chain to a fully EVM-native chain that settles to Ethereum. For everyday users, this shift means faster transactions, lower fees, and access to tools and apps that feel fa...
Horizen BlogZenIP 42409: ZenIP 42407 Addendum, Horizen 2.0 Tokenomics Proposal
There is a new ZenIP Proposal that recently passed, ZenIP 42409, which is an Addendum to ZenIP 42407: Horizen Tokenomics Proposal. The timeline for the vote on ZenIP 42409 was that voting opened on Monday, April 21st, 2025, at 12pm EST, and closed on Thursday, April 24th, 2025, at 12pm EST. With a quorum of 142% and 99.39% (1.1M $ZEN) of the votes FOR, the proposal passed! The full results of the vote can be found on Snapshot here. Let’s review this ZenIP proposal below, and we’ll also remind...
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