Zama, a privacy-focused protocol, is launching a landmark onchain token sale with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) floor of $55 million. The sale, structured as a sealed-bid Dutch auction, will distribute 12% of Zama's total 11 billion token supply. The event is notable for being the first fully onchain and non-custodial token sale conducted via the CoinList platform.
The distribution is split into three components, as detailed by Zama co-founder and CEO Rand Hindi. A 2% community sale for Zama's NFT holders is occurring this week. The main event is an 8% sealed-bid Dutch auction running from January 21 to January 24, with CoinList serving as a distribution partner. A final 2% post-auction sale will take place from January 27 to February 2 at the auction's clearing price.
"CoinList is adding bids to the Zama auction, but Zama also collects bids," Hindi clarified. "Only the main auction for 8% is with CoinList. The rest is outside." The entire 12% sale runs on Zama's own auction infrastructure, with CoinList acting as one access point rather than the exclusive venue.
The auction has a floor price of $0.005 per token, setting the $55 million FDV minimum. Bids will be filled from highest to lowest price, with the lowest price at which tokens are allocated becoming the clearing price paid by all successful bidders. There is no upper bound on the final FDV.
Scott Keto, President of CoinList, emphasized the significance of the sale for the platform: "Most sales [historically] leveraged our custodial infrastructure... In this new paradigm, investors are participating directly onchain." He added that CoinList plans to conduct all future token sales fully onchain.
A key technological feature is the use of Zama's Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology. While the auction executes on the Ethereum mainnet, bid quantities remain end-to-end encrypted. This prevents participants from seeing each other's positions, mitigating front-running and gas wars, while preserving onchain auditability.
Hindi positioned the event as a distribution mechanism rather than a capital raise, noting Zama's mainnet is already live. "It's a sale to users and validators, so more like a distribution mechanism to seed the token holder base," he said. Tokens purchased will be fully unlocked and claimable on February 2, immediately usable for paying encryption fees, staking, or delegation within the Zama Protocol.
Zama has previously raised over $150 million from investors including Multicoin, Pantera, and Protocol Labs, with its most recent equity round valuing the company at over $1 billion. Hindi stated that if successful, Zama plans to open its auction infrastructure to other projects seeking similar onchain distribution models.
