Enshrined Payment Channels: A Stateless, Post-Quantum, Confidential Rollup Design
2026-11-05 –, Lotus Stage 1

Payment channels solve speed but create routing and liquidity problems. Rollups solve settlement but leak balances and bloat state. This talk shows how enshrining channels inside a stateless ZK rollup fixes both at once, with lattice-encrypted balances, post-quantum signatures, and machine-checked safety proofs. Attendees leave with a reusable architecture, not a product.


Lightning-style networks force users to lock capital into pre-funded routes. Rollups avoid this but keep per-user state on-chain and expose every balance. We present findings from a design that combines both: channels hold balances encrypted under Regev/LWE, members co-sign state updates with hash-based signatures, and any channel pays any other channel through the rollup, so no routing or rebalancing is needed.

Three results stand out. First, an atomic signature: members sign hash(post-debit state, transfer tag) as one object, so authorizing a send and accepting the debit cannot be separated, removing a class of griefing attacks. Second, solvency over ciphertexts: ZK range proofs enforce non-negative balances that no one, including the block producer, can read. Third, machine-checked safety: authorization, no double-spend, solvency, and unilateral exit are proven in Lean. We close with in-browser proving benchmarks and WHIR-based on-chain verification.

Leona Hioki is the founder of INTMAX, a stateless ZK rollup for payments on Ethereum. He has worked on security and privacy since winning the IPA Security Camp, and has been part of the Plasma research community since 2018. Following an Ethereum Foundation grant, he launched the INTMAX network based on his research. His current work, INTMAX3, focuses on post-quantum cryptography, encrypted balances, and machine-checked safety proofs for payment channels.