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The Money Desk · Blog
Re:

zkAPI: What Happens to Expired AI API Deposits?

zkAPI is described as metered API access funded by deposits and unlinkable requests. A secondary report says expired, unclosed notes may be claimed by its treasury, but the expiry and recovery rules remain unclear.
From TheFinanceBase Team2 min to read
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A secondary report says zkAPI can let its treasury claim API-credit deposits that have expired and remain unclosed. The Ethereum Foundation’s listing describes the underlying project as a way to pay for metered API use through one-time deposits and unlinkable requests, but the available official summary does not spell out the expiry rule. Key details—including how long a note lasts and whether users can recover or renew it—are not established in the sources available here.

What is zkAPI?

The Ethereum Foundation dAI Team lists a publication titled ZK API Usage Credits: LLMs and Beyond, attributed to Davide Crapis and Vitalik Buterin. Its summary describes private, metered API access: a user deposits funds once, then makes unlinkable requests, with RLN and zero-knowledge solvency proofs forming part of the design.

A CryptoCompass report dated October 2, 2026 calls the launched product zkAPI and says it went live on Ethereum mainnet on October 1, 2026. The launch date and product name are claims from that secondary report, rather than details confirmed by the Foundation listing.

What does the report say happens when a deposit expires?

CryptoCompass reports that zkAPI notes have expiry dates and that an unclosed note may be claimed by the treasury after expiry. In practical terms, the reported risk is that a user who leaves a note unclosed past its deadline could lose the ability to spend the associated deposit, with the treasury able to claim it instead.

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The report does not establish how this claim is initiated, what “treasury” means operationally, or whether a user has a grace period. The available official summary does not confirm the rule or explain its implementation.

What should users check before depositing?

Before relying on zkAPI for funds, a user would need to confirm the exact note-expiry period and the steps required to close a note. The available sources do not state whether an expired note can be recovered, renewed, or challenged, nor how the claim condition is enforced.

  • Find the current technical specification and confirm the expiry interval.
  • Check whether users can recover or renew an expired note, and by what deadline.
  • Confirm the trigger and process for a treasury claim, including what happens to an open note.
  • Review what the unlinkability and solvency proofs do—and do not—guarantee before treating them as privacy protections for prompts, responses, or all payment details.

The Foundation summary supports the broad description of unlinkable requests and zero-knowledge solvency proofs, but it does not provide implementation details or a full threat model. It therefore does not establish that prompts, responses, provider identity, or every payment attribute are private.

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Which similarly named projects are different?

zkAPI should not be confused with zBase, which describes private USDC payments for AI agents using x402 and Privacy Pools, or Eunomia, a Stellar Soroban treasury project whose “Leash” is an expiring session authority for bounded agent spending. Neither project establishes how zkAPI handles expired deposits.

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