Introduction
Latens is a confidential borrow-lend protocol for Horizen, the EVM-native L3 settling on Base that Latens is built and deployed on. Collateral and debt amounts are never written or read in the clear: they exist on-chain only as cryptographic commitments, and every action that would normally require reading a balance (depositing, borrowing, repaying, minting, liquidating) is instead gated by a zero-knowledge proof that answers a narrow yes-or-no question without revealing the numbers behind it.
This section explains what that means in practice, what is and isn't hidden, and how the pieces fit together. It is written for anyone evaluating the protocol: users, auditors, integrators, and grant reviewers alike.
The currently deployed instance verifies proofs with a permissive mock, not the real zero-knowledge circuits, and has not undergone an independent security audit. See Status and limits before drawing conclusions from anything else in these docs.
Why confidentiality matters here
A conventional lending market publishes every position. Anyone can read how much collateral an address holds, how much it has borrowed, and therefore exactly how far it sits from liquidation. That transparency is useful to liquidators, but it is corrosive to everyone else: a public collateral ratio is a standing invitation for MEV bots to watch for the exact block where a position crosses its threshold, and it turns any institution's balance sheet into information a competitor should never have had.
Latens keeps position sizes private by default while keeping the protocol itself fully auditable: solvency is provable on-chain at all times, even though no individual position is ever disclosed without its owner's consent.
What Latens does
The protocol supports three actions, all gated by the same confidential machinery:
- Lend: supply an asset to a market and earn a real, compounding yield funded by borrower interest.
- Borrow: draw a loan against deposited collateral, sized against a proven (not disclosed) health factor.
- Mint: lock collateral and mint LatensDollar, the protocol's own confidential stablecoin, through a dedicated CDP contract.
Continue to Privacy model for exactly what is private, what is public on purpose, and why.