Repost the original title “Gold Rush Manual | Newton: Verifiable On-chain Automation Layer”

In Web3, the blockchain ecosystem remains fragmented, with low capital efficiency and a lack of automated trust. Against this background, Newton Protocol is committed to building a verifiable automated system for on-chain economy.

Newton enables users to delegate on-chain operations to agents through verifiable automation (combining TEE trusted execution environment and zero-knowledge proof ZKP), ensuring that the actions comply with preset rules. This article will cover an introduction to Newton, team and financing background, operating mechanism, and how to participate.

What is Newton Protocol? What is the background?

Newton Protocol is an infrastructure jointly created by Magic and the Magic Newton Foundation, aimed at introducing a verifiable automated layer for the on-chain economy. Newton ensures that every delegate’s operation is executed within the boundaries set by the user, and encrypts verification by integrating trusted execution environments (TEEs) with zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) technology.

Magic Labs, behind Newton, was founded in May 2018. Magic Labs eliminates the complexity of seed phrases and browser plugins through embedded wallets, making it easy for ordinary users to enter the Web3 world.

Magic Labs was co-founded by engineers Sean Li and Jaemin Jin from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

• Sean Li: serving as Magic CEO, co-founded Kitematic (later acquired by Docker and developed into Docker Desktop, used by millions of developers monthly)
• Jaemin Jin: served as the Chief Product Officer at Magic, worked as a software engineer at Uber from September 2015 to June 2018, and also worked as a software engineer at Apple Siri team for 10 months.

Magic says its team members bring together talent from companies such as Coinbase, OpenSea, Alchemy, and other technology and crypto companies.

Since its establishment, Magic has mainly focused on embedded wallets and API wallets. Its SDK can be integrated into any web or mobile application to help achieve passwordless authentication, non-custodial wallet-as-a-service, customizable embedded wallet widget UI, and is compatible with over 30 blockchains. As of April 2025, Magic claims to have onboarded over 50 million wallets and provides support for application wallets such as Polymarket, WalletConnect, Helium, Immutable, and more.

In terms of financing, Magic has raised approximately 90 million US dollars in total.

In July 2021, Magic completed a $27 million Series A financing round, led by Northzone, with participation from Tiger Global, Placeholder, SV Angel, Digital Currency Group, CoinFund, Cherubic, and angel investors including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, former Adidas VP Ben Pruess, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, Github CTO Jason Warner, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, and others.

At the end of May 2023, Magic announced the completion of a $52 million strategic financing, led by PayPal Ventures, with participation from Cherubic, Synchrony, KX, Northzone, and Volt Capital.

How does Newton operate?

The operation process of Newton Protocol involves participants such as users, developers, operators, and validators, as well as components such as smart accounts, zkPermissions, and execution coordinators.

The following is the operating process of Newton:

1. Developers build automated agents and package them as containerized applications: Using the Newton SDK and zkML framework, define the logic, constraints, and interfaces for the interaction between agents, users, and protocols, transforming their off-chain services into verifiable agents.

2. User initiates a request: The user submits an automated intent order.

3. Order matching and task assignment: The execution coordinator matches users’ automated intentions with operators through a limit order book mechanism, selecting the appropriate operator to execute the task.

4. Operator task execution: After the operator accepts the task, they will execute the defined automation logic off-chain, using TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments) to ensure trusted computation, or run zero-knowledge proof circuit machine learning model agents, embedding the verifiable execution directly into the zero-knowledge proof (ZKP). Once the task is completed, the operator will generate and submit TEE proofs and ZKP.

5. Result Verification and Execution: TEE authentication and ZKP are verified on-chain. If passed, approved operations will be executed with a restricted session key, completing the task and updating the relevant status. If not passed, the task will be rejected, and the operator may face economic penalties.

6. Reputation System Update: Based on the operator’s execution history, task success rate, and user feedback, the operator’s reputation is updated. Operators who perform well will gain better reputation, attract more user orders, while operators with poor performance may face economic losses and reputation decline.

According to Newton, its three core components are:

1. Smart Account: Using smart account standards such as ERC-4337, EIP-7702 to ensure the security of user wallets, supporting fine-grained and revocable permission authorization in an encrypted manner. Allows users to securely delegate operational permissions to automated agents through strategic delegation without surrendering private keys.

2. zkPermissions: It is a zero-knowledge proof permission system. Each session key is bound to a zero-knowledge circuit zkPermissions, which can encode automated rules, covering core permission types including:

• Based on data-driven execution conditions: transactions are only executed when on-chain sentiment data is bullish, and advanced trading strategies such as golden cross, slippage, liquidity conditions, Gas settings can also be set, and even scenarios where the inflation rate is less than 2% after the release of CPI data.
• Risk check: such as volatility gatekeeper execution, setting oversold buy execution, price spread triggering limit orders, etc.
• Transaction volume, frequency, and time limits: for example, setting the maximum number of transactions per day, the upper limit of each transaction volume, etc.
• Enforce baseline session key permissions for each proxy, including common permission types such as spending limits, expiration dates, and token allowance lists.

3. Executor: As a decentralized automated task market, it matches user intent with operators and verifies the correctness of execution.

In summary, Newton Protocol converts automation into verifiable on-chain primitives, combining the efficiency of TEE and the verifiability of ZKP, providing new infrastructure for the integration of AI agents and DeFi, and promoting the development of programmable economy and user-driven on-chain ecosystem.

How to interact?

1. In https://www.magicnewton.com/portal/rewardsEarn points on the portal website, ways to earn include:

• Roll the dice;
• Clear the mines game;
• Social tasks (side quests).

2. Register Newton App（https://newton.xyz/app), complete the proxy task. It is worth noting that it is currently not recommended to deposit a large amount of funds because currentlyNewton App only supports fund deposits and does not support withdrawals.

3. Tweet related high-quality posts. Newton Foundation will allocate 0.75% of its token supply to the Kaito community as a reward, of which 0.5% will be allocated to high-quality yapping and successful recommendations, and 0.25% will be distributed to a wider Kaito community based on community milestone achievements (stakers, holders, yappers).

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1. This article is reproduced from [ForesightNews], the original title “Gold Panning Manual | Newton: Verifiable On-chain Automation Layer”, copyright belongs to the original author [ KarenZ, Foresight News], if you have any objections to the repost, please contactGate Learn Team, the team will process it as soon as possible according to the relevant procedures.
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