Privacy Technology

Every transaction on Zano is private at the protocol level. Three technologies work together to hide the sender, the receiver, and the amount:

• d/v-CLSAG ring signatures hide the sender. Your real output is signed together with decoy outputs from the chain, and an observer cannot tell which ring member is the real source. The ring size is enforced by the protocol at 15 for every regular transaction, so privacy is uniform across the network rather than a setting users choose.
• Stealth addresses hide the receiver. Every payment goes to a unique one-time address that only the recipient can recognize and spend from. Asset types are hidden as well, through the blinded asset tags of the Confidential Assets scheme.
• Bulletproofs+ hide the amounts. Amounts live inside cryptographic commitments that let the network verify inputs and outputs balance without revealing any numbers, and Bulletproofs+ range proofs ensure no hidden overflow can create coins out of thin air.

Because transaction history is hidden, every ZANO is identical: no coin carries a traceable "history" that can be flagged or blacklisted, and no transaction can be selectively blocked or reversed. Privacy at the protocol level is what makes the coin fungible and censorship-resistant.

The one deliberate exception is auditable wallets, which opt out of decoys so their history stays verifiable.

Protocol-level privacy covers what is recorded on-chain. Network-level metadata (your IP address when broadcasting) is a separate concern; see the SOCKS5 proxy guide for routing wallet traffic through Tor.

The cryptography is specified in the research papers, and the ring-signature and Zarcanum schemes have been independently audited.