Is the Zama retail sale too complicated? A single article explains how to use the sealed Dutch auction house.

Original article | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | Asher ( @Asher_0210 )

On December 1st, Zama, a fully homomorphic crypto network that has raised a total of $130 million, announced on the X platform that it will sell 10% of its total ZAMA token supply through a sealed-bid Dutch auction. The auction will use fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to maintain the confidentiality of the bidding. Furthermore, the Zama mainnet is expected to launch before the end of the year.

Zama is arguably the most discussed project in the community during the recent TGE. Below, Odaily Planet Daily will analyze the Zama project, the sealed-bid Dutch auction, and the last interactive opportunity before the token issuance.

Project Overview

Zama is a company specializing in fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), one of the most hardcore innovations in privacy computing. Simply put, it allows computation directly on encrypted data without decryption. Zama's mission is to create efficient and easy-to-use FHE tools, driving the widespread adoption of this technology in Web3 and beyond. Zama's core team was co-founded by Rand Hindi and Pascal Paillier.

• Rand Hindi learned programming at age 10, created a social networking site that went viral in France at age 14, has a PhD in Computer Science and Bioinformatics from University College London, and founded and sold the AI voice platform Snips.
• Pascal Paillier is a leading expert in fully homomorphic encryption, with 25 years of research experience, 25 patents, and dozens of published papers. He has won the Asiacrypt Best Paper Award and is also a core member of IACR.

Zama has completed two rounds of financing, totaling $130 million . In March 2024, Zama announced a $73 million Series A funding round, co-led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs. In June 2025, Zama announced a $57 million Series B funding round, led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital. ( For more details, see: The Next Blockchain Giant: Why Zama Raised $130 Million )

The sealed-bid Dutch token sale will begin on January 12th.

Token Public Sale Details

Auction method: Dutch auction with sealed bids;

Auction period: January 12th to 15th, collection begins January 20th;

Public Sale Shares: 10% of the total token supply, of which 8% will be auctioned and 2% will be sold at a fixed price after the auction (maximum of $10,000 per person).

Lock-up status: Zama tokens purchased in the auction will be fully unlocked;

Auction pre-registration link: https://www.zama.org/auction .

Zama will be available for public sale starting January 12th.

What is a sealed-bid Dutch auction?

Zama will sell 10% of its total ZAMA token supply through a sealed-bid Dutch auction on Ethereum. The auction uses fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to maintain confidentiality, and highlights include fair distribution, no front-running, no bots, and no gas wars. Specifically, the sealed-bid Dutch auction consists of four phases:

• Phase 1: Shield stablecoins. Prepare funds and convert stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, and DAI on your personal Ethereum network into ERC-7984 confidential assets (the official website will provide the asset conversion website when the public sale is launched). The balance and transfer amount of these tokens will be encrypted.
• Phase 2: Place your bids, the bidding phase, runs from January 12th to January 15th. Users can submit any number of bids, bids are public, quantities are confidential, and the reserve price is $0.005 (equivalent to $55 million FDV) . Unlike open Dutch auctions where prices decrease over time, the sealed-bid Dutch auction allows users to bid at any price throughout the bidding period.
• Phase 3: Clearing price and allocation, the settlement phase, from January 16th to January 19th. The transaction price is determined by calculating demand from high to low prices using the FHE smart contract. Therefore, users will face three scenarios: 1. If the bid is higher than the transaction price, the user will receive the full allocation, and any overpayment will be refunded; 2. If the bid equals the transaction price: if the quantity exceeds the remaining supply at that price, the user will receive tokens proportionally, and the remaining amount will be refunded; 3. If the bid is lower than the transaction price: the user will not receive any tokens and will receive a full refund.
• Phase 4: Claim your tokens, starting from January 20th, to claim your ZAMA tokens (fully unlocked) and receive a refund.

To make it easier to understand, Odaily Planet Daily will provide an example. Suppose there are 1000 ZAMA tokens to be sold through a sealed-bid Dutch auction, and three people are participating in the bidding: Alice, Bob, and Charlie.

First, during the bidding phase, the bidding results for the three individuals were as follows:

• Alice bid for 400 tokens at $5 each, and eventually paid $2,000.
• Bob bid $4 per token for 600 tokens, and he eventually paid $2,400.
• Charlie bid 300 tokens at $3 each, and he eventually paid $900.

Secondly, after the bidding period ends, the auction smart contract will distribute tokens to each participant in descending order of bids:

• Alice bid the highest and received 400 tokens, leaving 600 tokens to be distributed.
• Bob was the second highest bidder and received 600 tokens. There were no tokens left to be allocated. Therefore, the final transaction price was Bob's bid, which was $4 per token .
• Charlie's bid was lower than the final transaction price, so he did not receive any allocation.

Finally, the application and refund process is as follows:

• Alice received 400 ZAMA tokens and a $400 refund;
• Bob received 600 ZAMA tokens, exactly the amount of which was non-refundable;
• Charlie did not receive the ZAMA tokens, but he received a full refund of his $900.

The last chance for interaction before TGE

Currently, Zama can still participate in guild quests (link: https://guild.xyz/zama/home ), which include:

Basic task: Get access to the Zama Discord. You can complete this by entering three of the four official communities and you can also join the official Discord channel to obtain an identity role.

New to Zama?   Task: It consists of five sub-tasks, which can be easily completed by following the task prompts.

Creator Program Tasks: This includes two sub-tasks. The first sub-task has funding requirements, and the second sub-task is the Creator Program itself.

Developer Program Tasks: These tasks have high requirements; proceed according to your own circumstances.

In addition, the OG NFT casting page will be open soon, and early participants can check their eligibility when it opens (link: https://www.zama.org/nft/og ).