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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. Inputs spending non-auditable post-Zarcanum outputs—the standard outputs created by current wallets—require at least 15 decoys. Official wallets use 15, producing a ring size of 16, and an observer cannot tell which ring member is the real source. Legacy pre-HF4 outputs retain their historical mixin rules.
  • 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.