Five regional lenders in the United States—Huntington Bancshares, First Horizon, M&T Bank, KeyCorp, and Old National Bancorp—have initiated a major shift in digital finance infrastructure by becoming design partners on Cari Network, leveraging Prividium atop the ZKsync platform. Together, these institutions manage more than $600 billion in total deposits, and their combined move signals evolving priorities in programmable settlement technologies for regulated entities.
Regulated Banks Confront Longstanding Settlement Challenges
The ongoing transformation in financial markets has exposed persistent issues for banks navigating demands from both regulators and the marketplace. Regulatory agencies require control over participant data and governance, while increasingly digital markets expect instant, round-the-clock settlement. As stablecoin volume climbed to $5.7 trillion in 2024, analysis from the U.S. Treasury suggested this trend could drain up to $6.6 trillion from the banking sector, intensifying pressures on medium-sized lenders whose stability often hinges on deposit retention.
How Prividium and ZKsync Address Privacy and Trust
Legacy attempts to modernize settlement have run into trade-offs. Permissioned chains such as JPMorgan Coin preserved internal oversight but lacked connectivity. Public blockchains offered broad access but placed sensitive data on public ledgers, while shared protocols introduced third-party intermediaries, which imposed trust models unsuited for high-stakes financial networks. Recognizing these limitations, network participants are adopting zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, a cryptographic advance that confirms transactions without revealing underlying details. This eliminates the need for a trusted operator and shifts the source of settlement assurance to transparent mathematical proofs.
Prividium provides the technical framework for banks to each operate their own chain, setting governance and compliance policies internally, while all settlement proof is posted to Ethereum. The design ensures no centralized authority oversees the process, preserving institutional autonomy and maintaining network consensus based on verifiable cryptography rather than contractual obligations.
Cari Network describes itself as an infrastructure initiative for tokenized deposit settlement, designed for regulated banking, and led by founder Eugene Ludwig, who served as the 27th U.S. Comptroller of the Currency. His leadership brings a regulatory lens to network architecture and priorities.
In highlighting the significance of the development, Alex Gluchowski noted,
“Regulated finance is moving to ZKsync.”
By participating as design partners, the five regional lenders position themselves at the forefront of deploying zero-knowledge technology in regulated banking. The decision to avoid closed proprietary systems and instead interface directly with public infrastructure reflects a consensus that mathematical validity, rather than centralized influence, should underpin future settlement operations.
The adoption of ZKsync and Prividium is seen as a response to both market competition from digital assets and the heightened need for verifiable, privacy-preserving settlement. As regional banks respond to shrinking deposit bases and stricter oversight, programmable networks anchored by cryptographic guarantees may become a central feature of the sector’s digital evolution.
