OKX POR One-Year Anniversary: Achieving Multiple Milestones and Setting New Standards for Transparency
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OKX POR One-Year Anniversary: Achieving Multiple Milestones and Setting New Standards for Transparency
OKX POR First Anniversary Review and Outlook
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsThe cryptocurrency industry, born out of distrust in the traditional financial system, has gradually emerged and attracted widespread global attention and reflection, growing into a market worth trillions of dollars. However, as a nascent sector with no precedent to follow, while the crypto market brings innovation and vitality to traditional finance, it also faces various unexpected black swan events. Compliance and transparency have become central themes for its future development.
As a leading global cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 technology company, OKX stands at the forefront in security and liquidity, prioritizing user asset safety above all else. Committed to elevating platform transparency to meet traditional financial audit standards, OKX is setting the benchmark for transparency in the industry. Its continuously evolving Proof-of-Reserves (hereinafter referred to as "POR") technology and methodology have been recognized by blockchain expert Nic Carter as representing the highest quality among mainstream exchanges.
Proof-of-Reserves is key to building trust between platforms and regulators and is crucial for fostering a healthy and sustainable crypto ecosystem. OKX is committed to maintaining a 1:1 reserve ratio, demonstrating its dedication to promoting healthy platform growth and ensuring the accuracy of customer funds and net balance data.
On October 30, OKX released its twelfth Proof-of-Reserves report, showing reserve ratios exceeding 100% across 22 disclosed assets, with BTC, ETH, and USDT each at 103%, collectively valued at $12.564 billion.
The release of OKX's twelfth POR marks exactly one year since its first publication in late 2022. Over this period, OKX has consistently published monthly POR reports, expanding the number of disclosed assets from 3 to 22, maintained reserve ratios above 100% for 12 consecutive months, and progressively upgraded its POR system using technologies such as Merkle Trees, Full Merkle Trees, and zk-STARK—achieving multiple milestones along the way.
OKX POR One-Year Milestone Recap
Proof-of-Reserves (POR) aims to verify that user assets are fully backed 1:1 by the exchange, demonstrating solvency and sufficient liquidity to users.
OKX is currently the only exchange in the industry to simultaneously achieve open-source verification of Merkle Trees, wallet address ownership, and on-chain assets—enabling users to independently verify its solvency at any time while protecting privacy. To date, hundreds of thousands of users have accessed the POR page and completed independent verification.
Proof-of-Reserves uses cryptographic methods to confirm that a digital asset exchange holds specific amounts of assets on a given blockchain at a particular time, increasing transparency of total user assets and deposit balances without revealing sensitive personal account information, making POR a critical component of the crypto ecosystem.
Reserve assets consist of highly liquid and widely accepted cryptocurrencies. OKX provides proof of reserves for up to 22 assets, including BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, XRP, DOGE, SOL, OKB, APT, DASH, DOT, ELF, EOS, ETC, FC, LINK, LTC, OKT, PEOPLE, TON, TRX, and UNI.
On this one-year anniversary, OKX’s POR program has achieved several key milestones:
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November 2022: OKX issued its first Proof-of-Reserves report, becoming one of the first major exchanges to do so;
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February 2023: More than 250,000 users had viewed OKX’s Proof-of-Reserves;
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March 2023: OKX enhanced POR transparency through Merkle Tree upgrades, publicly disclosing the full liability Merkle Tree while preserving user privacy;
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April 2023: OKX introduced zk-STARK technology into its Proof-of-Reserves, enabling users to independently verify the exchange's solvency and confirm their assets are fully protected;
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April 2023: OKX expanded its POR coverage to over 21 major cryptocurrencies and published more than 220,000 public wallet addresses;
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September 2023: Recognized as an industry-leading Proof-of-Reserves, expert Nic Carter described OKX’s POR as the “highest quality” among mainstream exchanges;
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October 2023: Marking one year since the launch of OKX’s Proof-of-Reserves, the twelfth report has now been released—celebrating a milestone of sustained leadership.
OKX Chief Marketing Officer Haider Rafique said: “Publishing hundreds of thousands of blockchain addresses, introducing zero-knowledge technology for trustless verification, and iterating based on user feedback—these milestones reflect the tremendous effort OKX has made over the past 12 months. I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you, whether or not you’re an OKX user, to revisit our Proof-of-Reserves. OKX is setting the standard for trust and transparency in the crypto industry.”
OKX Enhances POR Transparency with zk-STARK Verification of User Assets
Continuous innovation has been the core driving force behind OKX’s journey—and this is equally true for OKX’s POR initiatives.
Over the past year, OKX has successively upgraded its POR system using technologies such as Merkle Trees, Full Merkle Trees, and zk-STARK, proving its solvency while pushing centralized exchanges (CEXs) toward greater capital transparency and strengthening user confidence.
Looking back at OKX’s POR evolution, the exchange initially adopted Merkle Tree technology to prove platform assets. A Merkle Tree is a data structure that efficiently and securely verifies data integrity by hashing blocks of raw data into a tree-like hierarchy, widely used in cryptography and data security. The verification process typically involves three core steps: confirming whether user assets are included in the Merkle Tree and calculating total assets, verifying exchange wallet ownership, and checking whether the total value of published exchange wallet addresses meets or exceeds total user assets—thereby proving sufficient reserve backing. Public data shows that OKX’s reserve ratio has exceeded 100% for 12 consecutive months.
While this method ensures user data security and privacy, it cannot fully prevent misuse of funds. To overcome this limitation, OKX later upgraded to Full Merkle Tree technology, further enhancing reserve transparency. This allows users to download the complete Merkle Tree to verify the correctness of the total disclosed user assets. Additionally, by randomly splitting user data, the system publishes all user balances while preserving individual privacy—ensuring no one can view another user’s full asset details.
Subsequently, to continuously advance industry transparency, OKX once again led the industry within half a year by upgrading its POR with the innovative zero-knowledge proof technology zk-STARK, elevating exchange asset transparency to the industry’s cutting edge. zk-STARK, or Zero-Knowledge Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge, is a secure method that leverages zero-knowledge principles and the FRI protocol to verify data and audit authenticity. Importantly, zk-STARK does not disclose specific amounts, values, or addresses, thus protecting user privacy. The zk-STARK proof model applies three main constraints to user-side statistics: summation, non-negativity, and inclusion—ensuring credibility of the total user asset value, preventing forged negative-net-worth accounts, and allowing users to verify that their assets are included—effectively addressing shortcomings of Merkle Tree technology and enabling independent verification of exchange solvency.
The core function of POR is to prove that an exchange’s total reserves > total liabilities (i.e., all user assets). First, OKX uses the “zk-STARK” zero-knowledge proof algorithm to prove and verify all user assets held by the exchange. Then, it verifies ownership of OKX’s on-chain wallet addresses and the total value of assets in those wallets. Finally, by comparing the total value of user assets on the exchange with the total assets in the published on-chain wallets, OKX’s reserve ratio is validated.
Meanwhile, OKX’s on-chain wallet assets are fully transparent, with disclosed assets expanded to over 20 and more than 220,000 public wallet addresses published—allowing users to verify at any time that their funds are fully backed 1:1 by real assets, advancing platform capital transparency.
zk-STARK technology has received strong endorsement from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He previously stated during a forum event that “zk-STARK technology will become as important as blockchain itself over the next 10–20 years,” noting that as a powerful privacy-enhancing technology, it not only solves problems in blockchain applications but also improves security for users in centralized systems. Moreover, zk-STARK technology will help blockchains achieve both scalability and privacy.
Transparency Becomes the Future Theme of the Crypto Industry
In recent years, failures in traditional banking have exposed flaws in the financial system, prompting many users to turn their attention to and explore the crypto industry. While the crypto sector is not immune to black swan events or systemic risks, reviewing its brief decades-long history reveals a landscape full of challenges yet brimming with immense financial innovation and imagination—giving rise to numerous applications such as DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and Web3.
Under the leadership of globally leading Web3 tech companies like OKX, the industry continues to push forward transparency and establish new standards. Through continuous technological innovation, these efforts ensure user asset security while driving the overall health and development of the sector.
Beyond transparency in CEX operations, OKX is also actively advancing decentralized business development. For example, as an industry-leading all-in-one Web3 gateway, OKX Web3 Wallet now supports over 70 public chains, covering five major segments: wallets, DEXs, DeFi, NFT markets, and DApp discovery. It also supports Ordinals markets, MPC and AA smart contract wallets, gas swaps, and hardware wallet connectivity—delivering a seamless and secure user experience.
As a leading global cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 technology company, OKX maintains a 1:1 reserve ratio for user assets and publishes monthly Proof-of-Reserves reports, setting higher benchmarks for the crypto industry.
Looking back at 2023, OKX became the first exchange to reach the one-year POR milestone, turning promises into action.
Perhaps POR isn’t perfect yet—but it is necessary.
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