Fund your private account
What is the level of privacy?
Summary
When you fund your private account, your Ethereum connected wallet will be publicly visible as the sender of a transaction sending assets to our smart contract. The asset type and amount will also be visible. To keep your private account private, its address is not included in the funding transaction. Instead, you will claim the transferred assets with a private account transaction.How to best maintain your privacy
There will be a public record on Ethereum that your connected wallet sent assets into a Nyx smart contract (there will not be a link to your private account). For your Nyx connected wallet, use an Ethereum wallet whose history you don’t mind being connected to this action.Transaction example
Your Ethereum address is publicly visible as the sender of the assets you sent, with a Nyx smart contract as the recipient. The associated private account address (0x0673dbe45dfc756d96082a03b754419edce2ff9ed4bf652e2bc84ccba2615415 on the Aztec blockchain for example below) is not shown anywhere. We are comfortable sharing both the Ethereum and private account addresses of this example transaction because the Ethereum address is one of our testing accounts and because revealing your private address does not leak your private balance or private transaction history.
Here is an example transaction so you can see this:
Diagram
Send to Ethereum
What is the level of privacy?
Summary
As with funding your private account, when you send assets to an Ethereum address your private address is not visible in an onchain transaction. On Ethereum, the recipient will receive the assets publicly with a transaction that shows a Nyx relayer as the sender.How to best maintain your privacy
When you send assets out of your private account, consider sending them to a different Ethereum address you control (a fresh wallet, your exchange account, etc). This way the assets are not tied to the history of your connected wallet, or any connection someone has made between your connected wallet and your identity.Transaction example
There is no sender or token information shown publicly on Aztec (the home of your private account) as you can see with this example transaction:
Diagram
Private send on Aztec
What is the level of privacy?
Summary
Private accounts are on the Aztec blockchain, which is built to support private balances and actions. Nothing about private sends is publicly visible on chain. Only the sender and receiver know the transaction details (asset amounts and addresses involved).How to best maintain your privacy
Revealing your private account address to someone, as you need to do when you send them assets privately, does not leak your private balance or private transaction history. No one will know your private balance and actions unless you choose to tell them.Transaction example
There is no sender, recipient, or token information shown publicly as you can see with this example transaction:
Why do I have to share my private account address?
The recipient must add your address to their contact list in order to discover your private send and decrypt the transaction details. This is a feature of the Aztec blockchain your private account is located on, which ensures that only the sender and receiver can see the transaction details.Claiming assets coming into your private account
Why do I have to claim the assets/vault shares?
To protect your privacy. If your private account address was included in a transaction on Ethereum, it would be publicly linked to the actions and other account(s) involved in that transaction. A claim secret is used to prevent this linkage. Transactions coming into your private account include a claim secret when they’re created. A hashed value that can only be created with the secret is included in the transaction. You present the secret when claiming the assets, and once it is verified against the hashed value, the assets are released to your private account. For your convenience, our app automatically stores your unused claim secrets so you don’t need to remember them. To ensure that only you have control and visibility of your assets, we end-to-end encrypt this data and it can only be decrypted with your passkey, which we do not control. So, we cannot see (and thus cannot use) any of your claim secrets.What if I don’t claim them right away?
Don’t worry. Instead of sitting in your private account they sit in a smart contract, waiting on you to claim them the next time you use Nyx. Since you are the only one who can claim them, as only you know the claim secret (see question right above), no one else will claim them.What if I deposit to Aave but don’t claim immediately - am I earning interest?
