Private DAO Adapter
The Private DAO Adapter is Cipher’s confidential governance toolkit — an OpenZeppelin-style Governor where ballots are FHE-encrypted and the tally stays encrypted on-chain until the DAO decrypts the final result, with an optional zero-knowledge membership gate for anonymous, sybil-resistant eligibility.
You build your DAO by inheriting PrivateDaoAdapter, the same way you’d extend OpenZeppelin’s
Governor.
Privacy by default, ZK by choice
Every DAO on this adapter is confidential out of the box — encrypted ballots, encrypted tally. The zero-knowledge membership gate is an optional layer you switch on for anonymous eligibility, and off when you don’t need it.
| Mode | What you get | How to enable |
|---|---|---|
| Confidential | Encrypted ballots + encrypted tally; eligibility by token weight | Deploy with no verifier |
| Confidential + ZK gate | All of the above, plus anonymous membership proofs + one-time nullifiers | Deploy with a verifier + membership root |
The gate is runtime-configurable by the owner (setZkMembership) — turn it on or off after
deployment without migrating.
The two cryptographic layers
| Layer | Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Fully Homomorphic Encryption | Zama fhEVM | Encrypt ballots; tally encrypted values without decrypting individual votes |
| Zero-Knowledge proofs | Noir + UltraHonk | Prove DAO membership + nullifier correctness without revealing which member votes |
Features
- Encrypted ballots — votes are submitted as FHE ciphertext; the cleartext choice never touches the chain.
- Encrypted homomorphic tally — Against / For / Abstain accumulate under FHE as
euint64. - Token-weighted voting — weight comes from a confidential ERC-7984 votes token (delegation-based).
- Encrypted quorum — quorum is checked against the encrypted total supply.
- Optional ZK membership gate — a Noir proof over a Poseidon2 Merkle tree (depth 32) proves eligibility anonymously.
- One-time nullifiers —
Poseidon2(proposalId, identitySecret)stops a member voting twice, even from different wallets. - Runtime toggle — enable / disable / reconfigure the gate after deployment.
- Two-phase result decryption — request decryption, fetch the KMS public decryption, then finalize on-chain; only the two result booleans are ever revealed.
- Standard Governor lifecycle —
propose/state/execute, built on OpenZeppelin Governor.
How a vote flows (ZK gate enabled)
- Delegate — token holders delegate their confidential votes token to gain voting weight.
- Propose —
propose(targets, values, calldatas, description)opens a proposal. - Vote — a member submits an encrypted ballot + a Noir membership proof + a one-time nullifier in one transaction.
- Tally — the contract adds the encrypted weight into the encrypted tally; nothing is revealed.
- Decrypt — after the deadline: request decryption → fetch the KMS public decryption → finalize on-chain, resolving
quorumReached/voteSucceeded. - Execute — a succeeded proposal runs via
execute.
With the gate disabled, step 3 is just an encrypted ballot — no proof, no nullifier.
What you need
- A confidential ERC-7984 votes token implementing
IVotesConfidential(you bring your own). - The
@privacy-protocol/cipher-contractspackage and its peer deps. - For the ZK gate: the off-chain proving + encryption stack (see Proofs & Encryption).
The package ships the on-chain Solidity only. Your app generates the ZK proof, encrypts the ballot, and supplies the KMS decryption inputs off-chain.
In this section
- Build Your DAO — inherit the adapter and wire up voting
- Membership & Proving Kits — how the member set and roots are built
- Proofs & Encryption — generate the off-chain inputs
- Deployment — deploy your DAO and (optionally) a verifier
- API Reference — full contract interface