Paid privately. Spent privately.

When you top up ZCode with shielded ZEC, nobody watching the chain can see that you paid us, or how much. But today every question you ask carries the same access key, so our server can still line your questions up into one long trail, and line that trail up with your top-ups.

The trail problem

Private payment with linkable usage is half a privacy story. Even without reading a word, the shape of a trail says a lot: when you work, how often, and which conversations belong together.

“A top-up should buy you credits, not a name tag.”

Blinded tokens

The fix is well-studied cryptography, standardised as Privacy Pass. When you top up, your browser asks for a batch of credit tokens but blinds them first, so we sign them without seeing them. Later, each question spends one. We can check the signature is ours, but not which top-up it came from.

Change without a link

Answers don't cost a fixed amount, so a question reserves a few tokens and gets the unused ones back as fresh, blinded change. The change is as unlinkable as the tokens you started with.

What it won't hide

• Messages inside one conversation travel together, so they are linked by design.
• Your IP address and timing reach any server unless you use a VPN or Tor.
• The enclave has to read your question to answer it. Your browser verifies it first, but you're trusting its hardware and the code this site delivers.

What's next

Shielded top-ups are now live in beta, capped at the £20 Starter pack. Anonymous credits come next, and both will be independently reviewed before payment limits rise. Anonymous credits are still a plan, not a shipped feature.