Designing Invisible Privacy for blockchain payments

Labyrinth

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Date:

2022-2025

Description:

Designed a frictionless private transaction experience that turned complex cryptography into a clean, intuitive flow, helping, raise funding, partnership and build user trust.

Labyrinth is a multi-chain privacy protocol designed to bring private transactions to DeFi — without breaking the user experience.

Labyrinth started as a privacy-focused idea my friend and I experimented at a hackathon. The idea: Can we make private crypto transactions work seamlessly with existing wallets, without the usual friction or "am I doing something illegal?" That experiment turned into a real product. The idea was simple: make privacy feel natural and seamless, not shady or overly technical. We ended up building a protocol that worked with any existing wallet like coinbase, metamask, ledger, etc and it didn’t require a new UI pattern, and handled compliance through something we called “selective de-anonymization.”

I led product, design, hiring and partnership across every stage — from zero to testnet launch.

This work led to pre-seed funding to develop product further, research partnerships with Consensys/metamask research head, strategic integration partnership and a successful testnet launch all while staying privacy-first and user-centric.

Co-founder, Product Design + Strategy

Designed “invisible privacy” UX: Creating transaction flows that looked and felt like using existing non-custodial wallet while performing full cryptographic proofs under the hood to provide privacy. Privacy was always on, but never in your face. No extra steps. No learning curve.

Compliance-focused interactions: Built a pattern for “selective de-anonymization” that respected user privacy while making regulatory alignment easier. Basically, privacy that plays nice with the real world.

Strategic product direction: Led roadmap, UX, hiring, rebranding (from zkFi to Labyrinth), and early user education.

Additionally:

Rebranded the protocol from zkFi to Labyrinth

Built the hiring pipeline and onboarded the initial engineering team

Led ecosystem, design, and research partnerships

Privacy for transactions in Web3 is often clunky and mistrusted. This work proved that with the right design, cryptographic privacy can be human, usable, and scalable—without sacrificing on-chain interoperability.

Blockchain privacy solutions had always faced three critical barriers preventing mainstream adoption:

Technical Complexity Barrier: Existing protocols like Tornado, Railgun, and Hinkal exposed complex cryptographic concepts to users, creating steep learning curves even for experienced crypto users and had complex UX.

Fragmented User Experience: Privacy solutions typically required separate wallet installation to get privacy feature, or disruptive workflows that broke users' familiar patterns.

Privacy vs. Compliance Paradox: The industry struggled to balance regulatory requirements without compromising user privacy, resulting in invasive KYC processes that undermined the core promise of privacy.

While we solved problem of privacy with help of zero knowledge & threshold cryptography and compliance with help of innovative “selective de-anonymisation approach” by creating decentralised compliance network consist of actors like guardian and revokers. Solving both privacy and compliance problem has its own story but for now, I’ll mostly focus on how I worked on solving challenging UX to provide abstracted compliant privacy experience.

I did user research which focused on three distinct user segments:

Retail Users: Through interviews with everyday crypto users, I discovered many were using up to 15 different wallets just to maintain privacy—a tedious and error-prone process.

Businesses: Talking with 5 teams who were doing crypto payroll revealed a need for batch transactions for payroll and settlements with privacy built-in.

Institutional Users: Conversations with compliance-focused entities highlighted the need for transaction exports that maintained privacy while meeting regulatory requirements, while its necessary for other users as well, institutional and business users required multi-sig functionality for private transaction as basic feature.

I conducted:

25+ in-depth test demo interviews with teams from Consensys/ MetaMask, Dune Analytics, Optimism, Delfi Digital, Polygon, Ethereum Foundation and manymore

Regular feedback sessions during our closed testnet

1. Invisible Privacy Infrastructure

Rather than building yet another wallet or extension to fragment experience, I worked with team which enabled users to get privacy using existing non-custodial wallets like metamask, coinbase, phantom, etc. The breakthrough was enabling users to create "shielded accounts" with a single click using their existing wallets. Users could even use native EVM features like ENS and Account Abstraction (AA) for gas fee payment in stablecoin and DeFi apps, features like this made privacy invisible behind the hood while user feels safe.

I designed an onboarding flow that reduced the typical 8-12 step process found in other privacy tools to just 2 steps:

Connect existing wallet

Confirm create shielded account (one click) while connecting wallet

Congrats…you can now start using private DeFi

yes, its that simple.

This approach eliminated the need for new extensions, separate wallets, or complex setup procedures to store new seed phrase then bridging fund from different network to this new wallet which might have security concern while moving fund.

I designed transaction flows that mirrored familiar wallet transaction experiences while adding privacy by default:

For Transfers: The standard "send" flow was enhanced with privacy features that worked behind the scenes without adding steps while user can also enjoy features like ENS and paying gas fee in stablecoin.

For DeFi Activities: I designed interface for protocol integrations like Uniswap, Aave, Lido and 6 others that maintained their familiar patterns while adding privacy. Users could swap, lend, and stake with the same workflows they were accustomed to—all while remaining private.

I created reusable UI components that maintained consistency across these different activities, and new defi protocol integrations ensuring users didn't need to learn new patterns for each feature.

Working closely with our tech team, I designed the UI for our Selective De-Anonymization (SeDe) framework that eliminated the need for invasive KYC while still meeting compliance requirements.

The UI allowed users to:

Export only necessary transaction data for tax purposes

Selectively reveal transaction details to trusted entities

Maintain control over their data while staying compliant

This approach created a "third way" beyond the privacy-vs-compliance binary that had dominated the industry.

Decom - compliance network transaction explorer to check history of private transaction in labyrinth ecosystem

public request to de-anonymise transaction

Users can choose revoker of their choice

Users can choose revoker of their choice

The design work directly contributed to Labyrinth's measurable success:

Raised pre-seed funding with our design-focused solution

Secured partnerships with Consensys/MetaMask team for research collaboration and integration exploration

Successfully launched on testnet with positive feedbacks

Received praise from privacy advocates for our user-centered approach

Labyrinth has been presented at global conferences including: Bank of Italy (Financial Cryptography in Rome), WBS Gilmore Centre (The Shard, London), CBER Crafting the Crypto-economy (Columbia University, Boston University, Cornell Fintech, Avalanche, Uniswap Foundation).

My time leading Labyrinth's design transformed how I approach complex technical challenges. Seeing users using our privacy solution—completing transactions without additional steps or knowledge of cryptography —validated our approach: thoughtful design can make blockchain privacy both accessible and trustworthy by abstracting complexity while preserving functionality. Design must communicate security at every step. And balancing innovation with familiarity creates experiences that feel both groundbreaking and intuitive.

sure let’s connect, reach out at mitulgajera16@gmail.com, or DM on twitter(gajeramitulv).

Thanks for reading!