Privacy lies at the very foundation of crypto ethos and remains a core requirement for many DeFi users. Yet, achieving true privacy onchain can be challenging.
Today, we are excited to introduce Private Campaigns on Merkl: a new way to distribute tokens onchain while keeping transactions discreet, hard to trace, and operationally simple.
With private campaigns, you can leverage the full efficiency of Merkl’s incentive distribution infrastructure, while adding a strong layer of confidentiality for both senders and recipients.
Read on to discover why this matters, what new possibilities it unlocks, and how to start using it.
Any campaign created on Merkl can now be set as private from the start.
Private campaigns do not appear in the Merkl App and are also hidden from the API, preventing third parties from discovering or monitoring them. Campaign creators can optionally whitelist specific addresses so they can view the campaign, and only recipients see the tokens available to claim in their Dashboard when they connect their wallet.
Not appearing in the App is good, but it can still be seen onchain, isn’t that so?
Yes, but thanks to the scale of Merkl, which distributes millions of tokens every month, these campaigns are buried in the volume.
All Web3 teams creating campaigns on Merkl, whether private or public, send their funds to be distributed to the same Distributor Contract. This Merkl contract pools tokens from multiple protocols, chains, and wallets, and distributes them gradually as users claim their rewards.
This setup has an important privacy benefit. When a user claims tokens from the Distributor Contract, the onchain transaction only shows that the tokens came from Merkl. It does not reveal which specific campaign funded the transfer, making it impossible to trace the funds further.
Without a leaderboard and with no way to trace the origin of funds, these transfers become private and confidential.
The design of Merkl and its Distributor Contract already makes privacy possible. But user cooperation can take it even further. Two key practices help enhance confidentiality:
If a sender deposits a very specific amount, like 5,678 USDC, and another wallet later claims that exact amount, correlations can be made, even if the campaign is invisible in the app. An observer could match the wallet that deposited the tokens with the wallet that claimed them.
But with rounded amounts, attribution disappears. And the effect grows stronger as more users adopt this approach. As long as amounts aren’t overly specific, it becomes practically impossible for an external observer to link a token claim on Merkl back to its original sender.
Privacy is further reinforced by Merkl’s claim mechanism itself. Tokens on the same chain can be claimed in a single transaction, which also saves on gas fees. For example, all Ethereum tokens can be claimed together, all Base tokens together, and so on.
If a user receives a private USDC transfer and also earns USDC rewards from a public campaign, such as a liquidity program, all USDC are claimed in the same transaction. This blending of rewards makes private transfers even more confidential.
Private campaigns on Merkl unlock several high value use cases:
Merkl can be used to send tokens privately to individuals. For example, a company can pay an employee in tokens without other employees being able to detect or analyze those transfers onchain. This is especially relevant for compensation, bonuses, or one off rewards where discretion matters.
You can set up vesting schedules for contributors or employees while keeping each allocation isolated. Participants can only see their own rewards. They cannot infer what others are earning.
Protocols can reward specific users for providing liquidity or strategic support without publicly exposing the deal. The user supplies liquidity, and the protocol distributes rewards through Merkl in a way that does not publicly link the incentive to the agreement.
All of this works using the same Merkl infrastructure, without custom contracts or bespoke tooling.
Since it uses the same core system as standard campaigns, any wallet, protocol, or crypto company can implement private campaigns as a white-label solution, seamlessly integrating confidential rewards and claims into their app or experience, fully branded under their own identity.
Getting started is straightforward.
Please note that private campaigns rely on the exact same Merkl infrastructure as any other campaign. It typically takes around 8 hours (between 2 and 12 hours) after creating a campaign before tokens can be claimed. This reflects the time the Merkl Engine needs to process rewards and push them onchain.
Feel free to try it, Merkl does not charge any fees for private transfers (sending money privately to a single recipient)!