Skip to main content
Abyss is built on the premise that privacy and compliance are not opposites. The dominant framing of privacy systems as tools for evasion is a consequence of poor system design, not an inherent property of privacy itself. Abyss rejects that framing by explicitly separating information minimization from rule avoidance. Traditional blockchains enforce radical transparency by default. Every participant is subject to continuous financial surveillance by anyone capable of reading the chain. This is not a regulatory requirement. It is an implementation choice. In most real-world financial systems, counterparties do not expose their full transaction histories to one another simply by transacting. Privacy is the norm; surveillance is scoped, justified, and procedural. Abyss restores this baseline without breaking verifiability. Formally, the protocol enforces the following invariant: 
Verify(state_transition) == true
∧
Infer(sender_history | transaction) == computationally infeasible
That is, transactions remain valid and auditable, while historical linkage is cryptographically suppressed. Crucially, Abyss does not obscure:
  • Transaction existence
  • Transaction amounts
  • Contract state transitions
  • Total value conservation
What it removes is unnecessary correlation. Observers can verify that no inflation occurred, that withdrawals are authorized, and that double-spending is impossible. What they cannot do is reconstruct who paid whom, when, and from which prior economic activity. This distinction matters for compliance. Regulatory oversight typically concerns:
  • Illicit value creation
  • Unauthorized spending
  • Systemic risk
  • Market manipulation
None of these require universal transaction graph visibility. Abyss preserves all enforcement-relevant signals while eliminating incidental exposure of user history. In this sense, Abyss is closer to encrypted communication protocols than to mixers. TLS does not hide the existence of communication. It hides content from unrelated third parties. Abyss applies the same principle to asset transfer. Privacy here is not about hiding from rules. It is about preventing the internet from becoming a permanent financial dossier.