Benzo is a private-payments product on Avalanche built on the eERC (Encrypted ERC) standard. Status: deployed on Avalanche C-Chain mainnet (43114), Fuji, and the BenzoNet L1 — a fresh, not-externally-audited deployment. The mainnet converter wraps real Circle USDC and its Ownable admin is still the hot deploy key; treat mainnet as experimental until that admin is moved to a multisig / cold wallet.

• Soundness comes from eERC's audited Groth16 circuits and on-chain verifiers — value conservation, balance correctness, and transfer validity are proven, not trusted. Benzo does not modify the circuits.
• Proof generation is client-side (snarkjs in the browser / local Node). Private inputs never leave the user's device or Benzo-controlled runtime.
• Auditor key: the contract owner sets a rotatable auditor public key; the auditor can decrypt transaction history for compliance. Until an auditor key is set, private operations revert — fail closed.
• Decryption keys are derived from a deterministic wallet signature. Key custody is the wallet's; Benzo never stores raw private keys.

• Never commit .env, private keys, or mnemonics — not the Fuji test keys and, above all, not the mainnet deployer / auditor keys that hold or control real funds.
• Generated proving artifacts (.zkey, circuit .wasm, zkit output) are build products; regenerate rather than commit.
• New features that claim privacy must either rely on an eERC proof verified on-chain or fail clearly.

The retired Stellar/Soroban implementation (and its detailed threat model) lives in git history at fbb4d4e.

Report security issues privately to the maintainer (see repo contact) rather than via public issues.