ZKputer
sovereign shadow trader
Awards
The problem it solves
There is a growing demand for a holistic, sustainable and privacy-first approach to risk-on trading. Crypto is exploding, but for the individual trader it can be a chaotic, reactive state to be making decisions in. ZKputer is an open source, free solution that empowers traders with a shielded wallet on-ramp and compliant, auditable multi-chain protocols for ai trading from any AI IDE or CLI. Anyone can fork the directory and itβs theirs forever to build upon and deepen their edge. Human + AI trading together in the ZKputer set-up is the best of both worlds and our transparent, wrapperless approach is zypherpunk to the core.
Challenges we ran into
Challenges: AI Models Ignoring Procedures
AI models frequently deviated from defined procedures during multi-step workflows β skipping required checks, proposing invalid actions, or attempting to proceed without explicit human authorization despite clear instructions.
Specific problem: Non-deterministic procedure adherence.
Models would take shortcuts, ignore risk limits, or bypass approval gates during research β proposal β execution flows, breaking the audit trail even when human oversight was perfect.
How we solved it: Deterministic enforcement layer
Built a hard compliance gate that operates outside the model reasoning loop:
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Schema validation on every output All model outputs must pass structured validation before advancing to next step.
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Pre-action veto mechanism Independent enforcement layer rejects any proposal violating procedures, regardless of model creativity.
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Human command binding Execution triggers only on explicit human authorization phrases, cryptographically bound to session context.
Result: Models can reason freely, but cannot bypass procedure.
Key Insight: In agent economies, compliance must be architectural, not behavioural.