On-chain privacy for Solana, explained by doing
Every Solana wallet is a public diary. Quietline shows, step by step, how shielded pools break the thread between where money comes from and where it goes — then lets you run the real cryptography in your browser and measure how traceable your own address is today.
Open the notes lab or check an address
Solana right now live · read-only RPC
Send SOL to a friend, pay a merchant, buy a token: each transfer joins your address to another, forever, in a ledger that anyone can read and any analytics firm can index.
To enter a shielded pool you deposit funds alongside a commitment: a hash of two secrets only your browser knows. The pool records the hash, not the secrets. Nobody can open it, but you can later prove it is yours.
Your commitment sits among every other deposit of the same size. The longer you wait and the more people deposit, the larger the crowd an observer must suspect. That crowd is your anonymity set.
Every commitment is a leaf in a Merkle tree with one public root. To withdraw, you prove that some leaf under that root is yours. A zero-knowledge proof does this without revealing which leaf — the path stays private.
The withdrawal publishes a nullifier hash, derived from your secret. It stops the same note being spent twice, yet cannot be linked back to the deposit. Funds arrive at a new address with no line drawn to the old one.
What an observer can read
Illustration, not data. Scroll to send the payment.
| Detail | Plain transfer | Through a shielded pool |
|---|---|---|
| Who sent it | Visible | Hidden among all depositors |
| Who received it | Visible | Visible, but unlinked to the sender |
| Amount | Exact | Only the pool's denomination |
| Timing | To the second | Deposit and exit times, separately |
| Fee payer | Usually the sender | A relayer, if one is used |
| Your history | Every past transfer | Stops at the pool |
Shielding protects the link, not the endpoints. If you withdraw an unusual amount minutes after depositing it, timing and amount can still give you away. The simulator below measures exactly that.
Tool 01 · Notes lab
Real SHA-256 from your browser's WebCrypto. Nothing is sent anywhere and no funds are involved. The deposits from "other users" are generated locally as a sample crowd.
Depth 4, so sixteen leaves. Empty leaves hold a fixed "zero" hash. Each parent is SHA-256(left ‖ right). Real pools use deeper trees, a SNARK-friendly hash such as Poseidon, and a zero-knowledge proof so the path below is never revealed.
Pools accept proofs against any recent root, so a deposit landing a moment before your withdrawal does not invalidate it.
Tool 02 · The crowd
A Monte Carlo model of one withdrawal. An observer lists every deposit that could be yours and weighs each by how soon before your exit it landed. Change your habits and watch the crowd grow or shrink.
Reading Solana's current throughput…
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Tool 03 · Linkability check
Paste any public Solana address. We read its recent history from the chain through our read-only RPC relay and show the counterparties, rhythms and habits that tie it to other wallets. Nothing is stored.
This is what the check draws: a web of everyone your address has touched.
Paste an address above to replace this sample with real, public chain data. Lines get thicker with every repeat transfer.
—/100 linkability
A heuristic, not a verdict. Higher means easier to tie to other wallets.
Counterparties
| Address | Seen | Direction | SOL moved | Link |
|---|
Rhythm
Programs touched
Field guide
Deposit and withdraw in the pool's denominations. A 3.71 SOL exit is a fingerprint.
Every hour you wait adds deposits to your crowd. Exiting in the same minute undoes the pool.
Withdraw to an address with no history, then never send funds back to the old one.
If your old wallet pays the gas for your new one, you have drawn the line yourself. Use a relayer.
Sweeping several fresh addresses into one wallet links them all in a single transaction.
Activity clustered in the same eight hours hints at your timezone and routine.
A note is a bearer secret. Anyone holding it can withdraw. Store it like a seed phrase.
Habit eight
See which of these your own address already breaks.
Run the linkability checkGlossary
Questions
Neither. Quietline is an explainer and a set of working tools. It holds no funds, connects to no wallet and signs nothing. The notes lab runs real cryptography on pretend money so you can see how shielded pools behave.
The hashing is real SHA-256 from your browser's WebCrypto, the tree is a real Merkle tree and the double-spend check really compares nullifier hashes. What is simplified: production pools use a SNARK-friendly hash and hide the proof path inside a zero-knowledge proof. Here the path is shown so you can follow it.
From public Solana data. Your browser asks our same-origin relay for the address's recent signatures and transactions using read-only RPC methods. The relay forwards the request and returns the answer; nothing is logged or kept by the page.
Because they are links. A swap ties your address to a pool account at a precise moment, which is exactly what analysts correlate. We label known programs, but unlabelled accounts may be pools, exchanges or people.
It is a model, labelled as one. Deposits arrive at random at the rate you choose, and the observer uses a simple timing heuristic. Real adversaries combine more signals. Use it to compare habits, not to promise yourself safety.
No tool does on its own. Pools remove one link; your amounts, timing, fee payer and later behaviour can add new ones. That is why the field guide matters as much as the cryptography.
Rules differ by country and change. Privacy is a reasonable expectation for salaries, savings and donations. Quietline does not help anyone evade sanctions or law enforcement, and well-designed pools offer viewing keys for lawful disclosure.
Any address is public, but please use the checker on your own wallets. It exists to show you what you are exposing, not to profile other people.