Zero-Knowledge Commerce: compete together without sharing data

A thesis for the Board

The next step-change in B2B collaboration won’t come from sharing more data, but from sharing less—and proving more. Blockchain, combined with zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and verifiable credentials, lets customers, suppliers, banks and regulators verify price, performance, provenance, ESG parameters and compliance without exposing the underlying datasets. The result: faster, cleaner tenders, leaner audits, lower competition-law risk, and new pricing and financing models that were previously impractical.

The problem to solve (not another platform)

In complex negotiations the friction isn’t technical; it’s selective trust. Buyers want evidence on discounts, costs and origin; suppliers fear leakage of sensitive information; legal teams fear over-sharing. Cue NDAs, duplicated files, spot checks and weeks lost. Zero-Knowledge Commerce (ZKC) attacks the knot: it provides verifiable attestations—not spreadsheets—that demonstrate adherence to conditions and thresholds without handing over trade secrets.

How Zero-Knowledge Commerce works (in two clear steps)

First, operational events—quality tests, process emissions, delivery conditions, cost calculations—generate signed credentials within your systems.Second, a prover computes, offline, a cryptographic proof that a rule is satisfied (“the discount was calculated per the formula”; “CO₂ per unit is below the threshold”; “components sourced from non-sanctioned countries”). The proof is anchored to a permissioned DLT; the verifier receives a demonstrable yes/no, not raw data. There is no permanent upload of sensitive information—only re-usable proofs with expiry and revocation.

Two business vignettes

In strategic procurement, the buyer mandates a parametric cost formula (energy, logistics, processing). Each vendor submits a bid accompanied by a ZK proof certifying adherence to the formula and cap costs—without revealing internal weightings. Offers and ancillary conditions are ranked with native auditability, and disputes shrink because the rule has been executed, not interpreted.In capacity allocation (contract manufacturing), the contractor publishes limits and priorities; principals submit requests with proofs of eligibility (quality rating, defect history, SLA performance). The allocation engine validates proofs and issues a programmable commitment on DLT that underpins pre-financing. Capacity and capital move in lockstep—without a data room.

What changes for the CFO, COO and CIO

For the CFO, conditional finance becomes bankable: lenders discount invoices or pre-fund orders against cryptographic proofs of milestones and counterparty risk—not against self-declarations.For the COO, collaboration turns deterministic: specifications, tolerances and penalties become rules that every party can verify, sharply reducing exceptions.For the CIO, it is a chance to codify compliance: verifiable identities, key management, policy lifecycle and signed logs—no shared data lakes, no shadow IT.

Reference architecture (minimal yet robust)

At the centre sits a permissioned ledger anchoring proofs and referencing credentials; data remains off-ledger within your domains. Actors operate with enterprise wallets managing keys, permissions and rotation. Your systems (ERP/MES/PLM/QLM) mint signed credentials; a ZK engine generates proofs using standard circuits (range, sum, average, comparison, membership) and bespoke circuits for your business logic. The verifier—buyer, bank, authority—checks the proof against the active policy. Everything is traceable; nothing sensitive is exposed.

The KPIs that matter (our only list)

• Tender cycle time (request-to-award)

• Share of contested bids

• Average audit/compliance cost per supplier

• Average financing discount on orders/pre-invoices backed by ZK proofs

• Reduction in sensitive data shared (measured by fields/records)

Real risks—and how to manage them

The risk isn’t “the cryptography”; it’s governance and integration. You’ll need key-management processes equivalent to payments operations, with HSMs or enclaves and scheduled rotation. Oracles attesting physical or market events must be certified and protected with rate-limiting and challenge-response; wherever human discretion enters, design counter-proofs and a dispute-resolution pathway. Legally, pre-define disclosure policies per use case and map the competition-law perimeter with counsel: who sees what, when, for what purpose, and with what retention.

Operating model

Work from a catalogue of proofs: from range checks on energy costs to RoHS/REACH compliance, from preferential origin to emissions thresholds, through to correctness of discount calculations. Each proof has an owner, quality metric, versioning and an expiry. The catalogue becomes an enterprise asset—re-used across lines, plants and countries—and is progressively extended to strategic partners.

90-day roadmap

Weeks 1–2: pick two rules that currently drive disputes or audit cost; define data schema and thresholds with Legal and Procurement.Weeks 3–6: implement the prover and light integration with ERP/PLM to generate signed credentials; onboard one supplier and one financial institution.Weeks 7–12: run a pilot over 30–50 transactions; measure KPIs; conduct a post-mortem and decide on scale-up.

Uniquon’s role

Uniquon designs and industrialises Zero-Knowledge Commerce: we co-define the verifiable rules, integrate existing systems, deploy the proof engine and the enterprise wallet, and establish KPIs and governance. The aim isn’t to “do ZK”, but to compress cycle times, disputes and compliance cost—while opening financing channels that reward the quality of your execution—without ever giving up your data.