0xbow

About 0xbow

0xbow is a Nashville-based cryptocurrency infrastructure company that has developed a framework to address the tension between privacy in decentralized finance (DeFi) and regulatory compliance. The company was co-founded by CEO Nathaniel Fried, Zachary Cole, and Ameen Soleimani. The concept for their core product, Privacy Pools, originated from a 2023 white paper co-authored by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who later supported 0xbow with a pre-seed investment in March 2024. A subsequent $3.5 million seed round was led by Starbloom Capital with participation from Coinbase Ventures, BOOST VC, and others in November 2025.

0xbow's main offering is Privacy Pools, a protocol that uses zero-knowledge proofs to enable private cryptocurrency transactions. This technology allows users to batch and mix transactions to obscure on-chain links while simultaneously providing a mechanism to prove their funds are not connected to illicit activities. The system is built on the concept of "Association Sets," which group deposits into compliant clusters. The core compliance tool is the Association Set Provider (ASP), which monitors deposits, screens for suspicious activity, and can exclude tainted funds from a privacy pool without compromising the data of other users. This allows users to maintain privacy amongst themselves while dissociating from illicit actors. 0xbow offers this as ASP-as-a-Service (AaaS) to other privacy protocols and blockchain ecosystems.

The Privacy Pools protocol launched on the Ethereum mainnet in March 2025 and supports assets including ETH, wBTC, USDC, USDT, and DAI. Since its launch, it has processed over $6 million in transaction volume from more than 1,500 users. Initially launched with deposit caps to test its screening systems, the limits were later removed to cater to institutional users and high-volume traders. The company's business model is centered on providing this compliance infrastructure layer, enabling other protocols and enterprises to build upon it. By creating a solution that allows privacy and compliance to coexist, 0xbow aims to facilitate greater institutional adoption of crypto.