TLDR:
- Five U.S. regional banks holding over $600B in deposits have joined Cari Network as design partners on ZKsync.
- Stablecoins processed $5.7T in 2024, pushing regional banks to seek programmable settlement outside traditional rails.
- Zero-knowledge proofs allow banks to verify settlement cryptographically without exposing counterparty data to third parties.
- Prividium lets each bank run its own governed chain while posting ZK settlement proofs directly to Ethereum.
Five U.S. regional banks are moving to ZKsync, and the reasons run deeper than trend-chasing. Cari Network has announced that Prividium will power its tokenized deposit network.
The five design partner banks are Huntington Bancshares, First Horizon, M&T Bank, KeyCorp, and Old National Bancorp.
Together, they hold more than $600 billion in combined deposits. Their move signals a structural shift in how regulated banks approach programmable settlement.
A Decade-Old Problem Banks Could Not Solve
Banks have been caught between two non-negotiable demands for years. Regulators require full control over transaction governance and counterparty data.
Markets require real-time settlement and round-the-clock availability. No single architecture had successfully delivered both at once. That gap has widened as digital finance moves faster than traditional banking infrastructure.
The financial pressure is now measurable. Stablecoins processed $5.7 trillion in volume during 2024 alone. An April 2025 U.S. Treasury report estimated stablecoins could drain as much as $6.6 trillion from the banking system.
Regional banks bear the sharpest exposure to this shift. Their profitability depends directly on retaining deposit volume.
Previous solutions each failed in a different way. Private chains like JPMorgan Coin offered strong internal control but reached only a limited network.
Public blockchains connected any counterparty but exposed sensitive transaction data on a public ledger. Proprietary shared protocols introduced a trusted third party to order and confirm transactions.
That third-party dependency was the critical flaw. Settlement integrity rested on an operator behaving honestly, not on verifiable math.
For institutions managing hundreds of billions in deposits, that was not an acceptable foundation. A new kind of infrastructure was needed, one governed by cryptography rather than contractual trust.
Why ZKsync Is the Architecture These Banks Chose
Zero-knowledge proofs change the equation entirely. A ZK proof confirms that a transaction was processed correctly without exposing the underlying data. No operator is needed to validate the result.
The cryptographic proof itself carries the guarantee, removing the need for any trusted intermediary. This property makes private settlement on a neutral public chain possible for the first time.
Prividium is built specifically around this capability. Each participating bank operates its own chain under its own compliance and governance rules.
Settlement proofs are posted to Ethereum, with no centralized party controlling the process. Control stays with the institution, while settlement remains neutral and verifiable.
Cari Network’s founder, Eugene Ludwig, served as the 27th U.S. Comptroller of the Currency. His background shaped the network’s regulatory-first approach. As Alex Gluchowski noted on X, “Regulated finance is moving to ZKsync.”
For banks of this scale, building on rails controlled by a private company would have traded one dependency for another.
The settlement layer had to answer to math, not to a corporation’s discretion. ZKsync, through Prividium, is the infrastructure that finally meets that standard.
