Directed B2B payments
Pay a known business counterparty without publishing the payment amount and recipient relationship as plaintext Protocol inputs.
Availability: private transfer flows are available for evaluation on supported testnets. Tenebrae is not yet a mainnet production payment system.
Who this is for
- Finance and accounts-payable teams using stablecoins
- Treasury teams paying vendors or contractors
- Trading and digital-asset operations teams
- Platforms coordinating bilateral settlement
The problem
A standard token transfer makes its sender, recipient, amount, asset, and timing visible on-chain. Repeated transactions can reveal more than an individual invoice:
- The existence of a commercial relationship
- Payment frequency and approximate contract value
- Supplier concentration
- Changes in operating activity
- The broader network of counterparties connected to each business
This information is available to competitors, counterparties, analytics providers, and anyone else monitoring the relevant addresses.
How Tenebrae helps
Tenebrae separates the public funding and withdrawal boundaries from the bilateral transfer inside Protocol private state.
A typical payment flow is:
- The payer deposits. The payer funds Tenebrae Protocol from an existing wallet.
- The recipient shares private receiving material. The Tenebrae client uses a private transfer link to prepare recipient discovery data.
- The payer transfers privately. The amount and recipient relationship are not published as plaintext Protocol inputs.
- The recipient discovers the payment. The recipient uses the Tenebrae client to recover the incoming private asset.
- The recipient chooses when to withdraw. A later withdrawal returns value to a public wallet.
The transfer link supports recipient discovery; the zero-knowledge proof provides the Protocol privacy mechanism. Tenebrae does not require the recipient to hand custody of its wallet to the payer or to Tenebrae.
Example: confidential vendor payment
A company pays a specialist supplier monthly in stablecoins. Direct transfers reveal the supplier's address, the monthly fee, and the duration of the relationship.
Using Tenebrae, the company can make the bilateral transfer inside private Protocol state. The supplier receives control of the private asset and can withdraw later when public liquidity is needed.
The public chain still records the payer's deposit and the supplier's eventual withdrawal. Timing and distinctive amounts may create correlations, so operational practices remain relevant.
Privacy boundaries
| Information | Visibility |
|---|---|
| Payer deposit and amount | Public |
| Transaction submitter and timing | Public |
| Private transfer amount | Not published as a plaintext Protocol input |
| Recipient relationship inside the transfer | Not published as a plaintext Protocol input |
| Recipient withdrawal and destination | Public |
| Business context outside Tenebrae | Not protected by the Protocol |
Tenebrae protects the Protocol transfer, not invoices, messages, wallet telemetry, endpoint security, or information disclosed by either business elsewhere.
Operational fit
Directed B2B payments are a good fit when:
- The payer and recipient already use compatible public-chain assets.
- Both parties can use the Tenebrae client flow.
- Public deposits and withdrawals are acceptable.
- The commercial relationship or payment amount is sensitive.
- Each organisation retains its own wallet and compliance responsibilities.
The current flow is bilateral. Multi-recipient orchestration is a separate roadmap capability; see Batch private disbursement.
Current scope
Private transfers can be evaluated on supported testnets. Production use requires separate assessment of mainnet deployment, supported assets, operational monitoring, recovery procedures, transaction costs, and service commitments.