Privacy
This page answers a different question from the trust model: if you use ZcashNames, what becomes visible about you?
Visibility
- The claim transaction is publicly readable on chain as the indexer’s uivk is public.
- The registry is public, so anyone who knows your name can resolve it to your unified address.
- On Zcash, knowing a unified address does not reveal your balance, transaction history, or counterparties.
- The biggest privacy risk is usually the name you choose - not the address format underneath it.
What happens when you claim a name
ZNS writes its actions inside Orchard shielded memos. Those memos are not readable by ordinary chain observers.
That means someone watching the chain can see that a shielded transaction happened, but they cannot read the name and address pair out of the memo just by scanning the blockchain.
What becomes public later
Once a name is registered, the registry is meant to be queried. Anyone can ask the resolver for:
alice.zcash -> u1...
That lookup is public by design. If someone knows your name, they can learn the unified address it points to.
Why this is different from a naming service on a transparent chain
On a transparent chain, knowing an address usually reveals a full financial fingerprint.
On Zcash, a unified address does not expose:
- current balance
- transaction history
- counterparties
So making your unified address publicly queryable is a much smaller privacy leak than it would be on Ethereum or Bitcoin.
Who can see the name-address pair
Two parties have direct visibility into the registration data as operated today:
- the indexer operator, because the indexer scans the registry wallet’s incoming viewing key
- the service that signs claim payloads for the web flow
That is different from saying the pair is public on chain. The chain exposure and the operator exposure are not the same thing.
Practical advice
If privacy matters to you:
- use a dedicated unified address for your ZNS name
- choose a pseudonymous name unless you want the identity link
- treat the public name itself as the main disclosure