Private Crypto Transactions: Zcash, Aztec & Dash Update

On most blockchains, every transfer is public forever. Anyone with a block explorer can see which address sent how much to whom, and analytics firms routinely link those addresses to real people. A growing group of networks is built to break that link — and in the past few weeks, several of them hit major milestones.

How "untraceable" transactions work

Shielded pools with zero-knowledge proofs (Zcash, Aztec, Dash Evolution): funds move inside an encrypted pool. The network verifies a proof that the transaction is valid without learning the sender, receiver or amount.
Private by default (Monero): every transaction mixes in decoys and uses one-time addresses and hidden amounts, so there is no transparent mode to fall back to. Monero's planned FCMP++ upgrade is designed to replace the small decoy sets with membership proofs over the entire chain.

Zcash: price and private usage both rise

Zcash has led the privacy trade this year. On September 6, ZEC closed above $1,000 for the first time since late 2016, around $1,023, and traded near $1,187 a few days later. More telling than the price is how the coin is being used: Zcash's shielded pool grew from roughly 11% to about 30% of total supply within a year, meaning far more ZEC now sits in fully private form.

On October 2, THORChain deployed a Zcash liquidity pool, a preparatory step toward native cross-chain ZEC swaps. Trading is not enabled yet, and THORChain warned that "liquidity is shallow for now and will grow over time." It has not said whether shielded addresses will be supported.

Aztec: private stablecoin payments return to Ethereum

On September 29, Aztec Labs relaunched zk.money, the private payments wallet it shut down in 2023, this time on the decentralized Aztec Network, an Ethereum layer-2. Users get readable handles such as bob.zk.money and can send USDC, USDT and DAI with balances, amounts and counterparties hidden. Private functions run on the user's own device, which generates the zero-knowledge proofs.

There are limits during the early rollout: a $2,500 cap per transaction and a $50,000 daily deposit ceiling shared across all users. Deposits from Ethereum also remain public — only what happens inside zk.money is private. "Onchain transactions between two individuals shouldn't mean publishing your financial history to the world," said Aztec Labs CEO Joe Andrews.

Dash: shielded transfers on Evolution

In August, Dash activated shielded transactions on its Evolution chain using Zcash's Orchard technology. The optional pool hides balances, senders and recipients while funds stay inside it, with one-second finality on Evolution. Moving funds between Evolution and the original Dash Core chain can still involve a slower step, so the two should not be treated as equally private.

The limits of privacy

Entry and exit points are visible. Deposits into and withdrawals out of a shielded pool can often be seen, and timing or amounts can leak information.
Exchanges still know their customers. Buying or cashing out through a regulated exchange ties funds to an identity.
Regulation is unsettled. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash in 2022 before removing it from the sanctions list in March 2025, a reminder that privacy tools remain a regulatory target.

Privacy is moving from a niche feature toward core infrastructure: shielded pools are getting larger, private payments are becoming usable, and liquidity is arriving through cross-chain protocols. Whether regulators and exchanges accept that shift will shape how far it goes.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.

Featured image: Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn at the 34th Chaos Communication Congress, Leipzig, 2017. Image: Wikipedia / Tobias Klenze / CC-BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).