Cari picks ZKsync’s Prividium as US regional banks join stablecoin race

Cari Network, a permissioned network for banks led by former United States Comptroller of the Currency Gene Ludwig, has chosen Matter Labs’ Prividium infrastructure to power a bank-governed tokenized deposit network for US regional and mid-sized lenders. 

Built on ZKsync and anchored to Ethereum, the platform is designed to let participating banks issue and move tokenized deposits around the clock while keeping them on the balance sheet as bank liabilities, according to a Tuesday release shared with Cointelegraph.

The move comes as lawmakers debate frameworks such as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act and as stablecoin issuers encroach on banks’ role in payments and deposit funding.

“Financial infrastructure is being redesigned in real time, and mid-sized banks are the ones being left behind,” ZKsync CEO Alex Gluchowski told Cointelegraph, framing the network as a tool for banks to “lead that transition, rather than be displaced by it.” 

Regional banks seek tokenized deposits for stablecoin-style payments

Five US banks, Huntington Bancshares, First Horizon, M&T Bank, KeyCorp and Old National Bancorp, have been involved in designing and testing the network since February, according to a Bloomberg report.

Related: Stablecoin uncertainty could hurt banks more than crypto firms: Expert

According to the release, the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America has backed the broader model, arguing that keeping deposits within regulated institutions is critical for small business lending and local economies.

Cari’s tokens represent existing customer deposits at participating banks and are intended to remain within a permissioned environment governed by bank risk and compliance frameworks, rather than circulating freely in decentralized finance (DeFi). 

Prividium targets privacy, control and onchain auditability

According to ZKsync, Prividium serves as the shared ledger, enabling instant settlement between verified counterparties while separating transaction records and balances from personally identifiable data, which stays in each bank’s core systems. 

ZKsync’s public network has struggled to sustain usage in the past year. Onchain data analyzed by Nansen showed ZKsync recording one of the steepest declines among major chains in 2025, with transactions falling about 90% as airdrop-driven activity cooled.

Related: Why institutions still prefer Ethereum despite faster blockchains

At the same time, ZKsync has been steering its roadmap toward exactly the kind of institutional use case Cari represents. Its 2026 plan centers on privacy, deterministic control and native interoperability as prerequisites for banks, enterprises and governments.

Gluchowski said the architecture was designed with US banking privacy and supervisory expectations in mind, including data protection, examiner access and tamper-evident audit trails.

While some banks have explored issuing or partnering on stablecoins, Gluchowski argues that tokenized deposits “are complementary to stablecoins,” adding that ZKsync sees deposits being used as “the payment tokens by banks when money needs to move in and out” of their private infrastructure.

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