discussion · nothing decided · nothing shipped

Privacy — options on the table

This page is a working discussion, not a roadmap. TEXITcoin is a transparent chain, like Bitcoin: every amount, every address, and every token transfer is publicly readable. That is a design property, not an accident, and changing it is the single most consequential kind of change we could make. Before deciding anything, we lay out what leaks, what can be fixed cheaply, and what the expensive options actually cost.

Wallet + network fixes

cheap, no release needed

Protocol-level privacy

possible, high risk

Decision needed

open

What the chain exposes today

Every TXC and Omni token transaction is fully public: sender addresses, receiver addresses, amounts, and change. Anyone can run a node or use a block explorer. Anyone can cluster addresses by observing which ones are funded together, which is how blockchain analysis companies link wallets to identities.

Beyond the chain itself, the network leaks too. The computers you connect to see your IP address. Your wallet often reuses the same address for many payments, gluing them together. Broadcasting a transaction from a home or office IP ties a real-world location to that address the moment it appears in the mempool.

Omni tokens inherit all of this. Send To Many is, if anything, more revealing than a normal send: one transaction loudly announcing that one address paid many recipients.

The cheap tier — wallet and network habits

Fresh address per receive

wallet-side · can ship now

Standard practice on transparent chains. The wallet generates a new address each time it asks for a payment, so payments stop chaining back to one identity. This lives entirely in wallet software — no consensus change, no release, no coordination.

Coin control

wallet-side · can ship now

Let the user choose which coins (unspent outputs) to spend, so a payout to a merchant does not sweep together coins that reveal how much the wallet holds in total. Also standard on mature transparent-chain wallets.

Broadcast over Tor or a VPN

can document now

The mempool is the leakiest surface: nodes see the transaction before the chain does. Broadcasting through Tor removes the IP-to-address link at negligible cost. Guidance plus a node configuration option; no consensus change.

None of these change what the chain records. They shrink the metadata around the chain — which is where most real-world de-anonymization actually happens.

The network tier — hiding connections

Tor as a first-class node option

v0.27.0 candidate

A node configuration (and eventually a default) that makes the node accept and make connections through Tor, and exposes the RPC and P2P ports as hidden services. Operators who want it get network-level privacy for their node; everyone else is unaffected. This is also on the resilience list — a Tor hidden-service node removes our dependence on Amazon and DNS for reachability.

Dandelion-style transaction routing

research only

Changes how transactions propagate so the first node to see one cannot confidently pinpoint the broadcaster. It touches the peer-to-peer relay rules every node runs, which means a coordinated upgrade and subtle correctness risks around how transactions race through the network. Not worth the complexity at our size; keep it on the shelf.

The mixing tier — CoinJoin

CoinJoin coordination

evaluate as its own project

CoinJoin combines many users’ payments into one transaction so inputs and outputs no longer correspond one-to-one. It needs a coordinator (a service that collects participants and constructs the joint transaction) and wallet support to sign it correctly. No consensus change is required — the chain just sees one bigger transaction.

The costs are operational and reputational: a coordinator is infrastructure to run and secure, participation adds delay and fees, and exchanges have historically flagged or frozen deposits that trace through known mixers. With our current exchange relationships still fresh, treating this as a separate, optional project — not a release feature — is the honest call.

The protocol tier — what we could change in the chain itself

These are the options people usually mean by “privacy coin features.” Each changes what every node must understand, which means a coordinated release, permanent verification complexity, and a very different conversation with exchanges and regulators.

Optional sidechain privacy (MWEB-style)

heaviest realistic option

Litecoin’s approach: a privacy pool attached to the main chain. Funds move in and out through peg transactions; inside, amounts and addresses are hidden. It keeps the main chain rules untouched, which is why Litecoin survived exchange scrutiny better than shielded-only coins. The cost is a second verification system, larger block sizes, and real audit work on the cryptography.

Shielded pool (Zcash-style)

high risk for us

A set of outputs whose values and owners are cryptographically hidden, with spend proofs (zero-knowledge proofs) replacing visible signatures. Maximum privacy, but it adds heavyweight verification to every node, makes chain analysis of shielded flow impossible (which regulators read as a feature of crime, not of users), and is the profile that gets coins delisted. We are currently working to get listed, not to look like a delisting candidate.

One-time group signatures (Lelantus Spark-style)

interesting, same risk class

Spends are proven to come from some member of a large anonymity set, without revealing which. Lighter than full zero-knowledge circuits and keeps transaction sizes moderate, but it is still on-chain privacy that changes the meaning of “valid transaction” for every node — same coordinated-upgrade and exchange consequences as a shielded pool, milder in degree.

Our position: none of these belong in a release until there is demonstrated demand from users and a settled view from the exchanges we care about. The chain is young, the exchange relationships are new, and this is the kind of change that is easy to make and impossible to quietly undo.

Working recommendation

Now — wallet privacy guide: fresh addresses, coin control, Tor broadcasting. Cheap, immediate, no release.
v0.27.0 candidate — Tor as a first-class node option. Doubles as resilience infrastructure.
Own project, when justified — CoinJoin coordination, kept optional and separate from releases.
Hold — protocol-level privacy. Revisit only with real user demand and exchange-level clarity. Sidechain-style (MWEB) is the only shape we would seriously consider, because it leaves the main chain rules intact.

Open questions for this discussion

How much wallet-side privacy work belongs in our own wallet versus guidance for wallet builders?
Should Tor exposure be opt-in per node, or default-on for operators who run the Spinner?
Is there actual user demand for on-chain privacy, or is it an assumed requirement?
What are the exchanges we care about actually saying about optional-privacy designs?