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Light Protocol is a zero-knowledge compression protocol on Solana. It compresses on-chain account states into Merkle tree roots, enabling developers to store and update tokens, accounts, and other data at significantly lower costs. It supports creating compressed tokens, transferring assets, and querying balances while maintaining compatibility with SPL Token. The protocol suits scenarios like large-scale airdrops and game assets, drastically reducing storage overhead.
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About Light Protocol
Light Protocol is a zero-knowledge (ZK) privacy infrastructure project in the Solana ecosystem. Its core product, ZK Compression, uses recursive zero-knowledge proofs to compress on-chain state, so creating tokens and program-derived addresses (PDAs) no longer requires high rent per account, significantly reducing on-chain storage costs. The project also contributed ZK syscalls to the Solana runtime, such as Poseidon hashing and BN254 curve operations, making it an underlying dependency for many Solana privacy applications.
Its main narrative is that privacy is the final frontier for blockchain scalability. Traditional blockchains expose all transactions and balances publicly, which hinders institutional adoption; meanwhile, on-chain storage costs limit scalability. Light addresses both problems with ZK cryptography: it compresses state costs while supporting encrypted balances, encrypted payments, and encrypted markets, while retaining auditability and selective disclosure.
Over the past half year, Light Protocol integrated with infrastructure firm Helius, which continues developing a privacy layer based on its technology. ZK Compression remains open source, with indexers and tooling maintained by Helius. As of 2026, ZK Compression has created approximately 90 million compressed accounts and is supported by major wallets and RPC providers. Note that the Light Token SDK is being sunset, so developers need to migrate. Overall, the project remains active, but its focus has shifted toward a programmable privacy layer developed with Helius.
Over the past six months, Light Protocol's most significant development was its acquisition by Helius, announced on June 10, 2026. The team will return to its original focus on privacy infrastructure while continuing to maintain ZK Compression. In March 2026, they released ZK Compression V2 and SDK v0.23, which introduced a new Light Token Program with UX and performance improvements, alongside the mainnet deployment of light_registry and light_compressed_token programs. Looking ahead, the official roadmap centers on building a fully onchain privacy layer for Solana, supporting confidential payments, encrypted balances, and privacy-enabled DeFi applications, with auditability and selective disclosure built in. Helius plans to open this privacy infrastructure to developers during 2026. The acquisition does not affect existing ZK Compression users, and the protocol remains actively maintained.
Swen Schäferjohann: Co-founder and Director. Studied Software Engineering at CODE University of Applied Sciences (2018-2021), with experience in product, business development, engineering, and design. Familiar with React.js. Based in Lisbon, leading product and business development.
Jorrit Palfner: Co-founder and CEO. Holds a Bachelor's in Industrial Engineering and Management from KIT and a Master's in Computer Networks and Distributed Systems from UPC. Previously involved in blockchain and security research, focusing on ZK privacy. Led the team to build ZK Compression; joined Helius after the acquisition.