Private address
A link anyone can pay you with, which does not say who you are. Payers use ETH, public ZERO or their private balance; you collect the payments into your balance.
Your private address is a link you can share anywhere: in a bio, a post, an invoice. Anyone can pay you with it, and neither they nor the chain learn who you are.
https://zerotrace.so/pay#B7d8zMMNXFtBjpV32hvjdHj8RyVq…How it works
The keys you registered are public and tied to your address, so a link carrying them would name you. Your private address carries other keys instead: a second identity that your app derives from the same activation signature. Nothing on-chain relates it to your address or to your registered keys.
A payment to it creates a note owned by those keys. Your app finds these notes along with your own, keeps them apart from your balance, and lets you move them in. Spending them needs a Spend signature from your wallet, as for every note, so the activation signature alone cannot move them.
The keys sit after the #, which browsers never send to a server. The link ends with a checksum: a link that was
cut or changed is refused, so nothing can be paid to keys nobody holds.
Share your private address
In the wallet, the Private address card shows your link, with Copy link, Share and a QR code. Next to
it is a fingerprint, such as ZT·4F2A·91C0: the payment page shows the same fingerprint, so a payer can check with
you that the link is yours.
The address never changes for your wallet. You can share it as many times as you like.
Pay a private address
Opening the link shows the payment page and the fingerprint. The payer picks one of three ways.
| Private balance | ETH | Public ZERO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the payer needs | Privacy turned on (one signature; no registration) | A wallet with ETH | A wallet with ZERO |
| What happens | A private transfer from their notes | A purchase of ZERO straight into your note | Their ZERO moved into your note |
| What the chain shows | A private transaction: neither of you, nor the amount | Their purchase and its amount; not whom it pays | Their payment and its amount; not whom it pays |
| Who pays the fee | The payer: one network fee, from their notes | The payer: gas and the trading fee of any purchase | The payer: gas |
A payer who pays from their private balance sees a Sent entry in their history, to a private address. It does not name you: the app records only a stand-in that matches no account.
Collect your payments
Payments wait at your private address, apart from your balance:
- the Private address card shows what is waiting, and your history shows each payment as Paid to your private address, with how it was paid;
- press Move to balance to bring them in. It is one private transaction, signed by your wallet, which spends up to two payments and pays one network fee from them. With more than two waiting, press it again.
Once moved, the ZERO is in your balance like any other note, and your history shows Moved to your balance.
What each side sees
| Who | Sees |
|---|---|
| You | Every payment to your private address, its amount and how it was paid. Not who paid privately; for a payment with ETH or public ZERO, the payer's address is public on the chain. |
| A payer | Their own payment. Not who you are, and not what anyone else paid you. |
| Everyone else | The payments made with ETH or public ZERO, but not whom they pay; nothing of the private ones. Your collections are private transactions. |
Keep it safe
- Check the fingerprint when it matters. Someone who can change the link you share, for example in a message or on a web page they control, could put their own private address in its place.
- The link is not a secret. It lets people pay you, nothing more: it cannot move your notes or show your balance.
- Small payments cost more to collect. Each collection spends the two largest payments waiting and pays one network fee. Payments worth less than that fee are not worth collecting on their own.