How private is Nyx?

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.nyx.money/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Where does your privacy come from?

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Aztec and Nyx privacy

Your privacy comes from three main areas:

1. The Aztec blockchain was built to enable private function calls and private state. This is where your private balance lives and your private actions take place. By design, no one can see your private balances, private sends, and initiation of private earn (Aave lend) and send to Ethereum actions except for the person who controls your private account information: you.
2. Aztec uses locally generated transaction proofs, meaning that the data about what happens in a transaction - e.g. you send 10 USDC to a friend - never leaves your browser. A zero-knowledge proof is generated and sent to the Aztec network. The network then verifies that someone sent a transaction that changed a coin balance they have control over - not who the sender and receiver are, or what coin type or amount was involved. Only the recipient can read the updated balance - no one else. The proof generation and network proof verification steps can take a while, which is why you see a delay between signing to authorize a private transaction and that transaction completing. We and Aztec are exploring ways to speed these steps up over time, but there will likely always be a delay of some kind in order to guarantee this strong level of privacy.
3. Nyx uses passkey-based, end-to-end encryption to keep a very limited amount of information - like your account secret and contacts - on our backend so you can easily move across devices. Since we do not control your passkey, and only your passkey can decrypt this data, it can only be viewed and used by you in your browser.

If you wish, you can learn more in our technical overview and in Aztec’s docs. As a result of the above, the following are true:

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It is very important for you to maintain access to your passkeys!

If you lose access to all of your passkeys, you lose access to your private account as we cannot decrypt your account data and recover it for you. See our passkey tips.

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Revealing your private address does not expose your private actions

Revealing your private account address to someone, as you need to do when you send them funds privately, is a safe action. If your private address was to leak publicly, it does not risk exposing anything about your private account. Your private account actions and balances aren’t publicly visible onchain, and neither is a link between your private address and any Ethereum address it sent to or received from, so no one could use your private address to look this information up. This is by design of the Aztec blockchain Nyx uses for private accounts and private account actions. You cannot even look up your private address on an Aztec explorer like Aztec Scan or Aztec Explorer because your private account has no public data! For an example of this, see our docs section on transferring coins to your private account where we share the private address of a test account.

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How to hide your balances

If you’re out in public and are concerned about others viewing your screen, you can use our “Hide balances” feature to hide all your coin and investment balances. Click the eye icon in the menu bar in the upper right and the balances on the screen will blur.

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What is publicly visible onchain?

Any transactions originating from or sent to an Ethereum account are visible in Ethereum explorers, including the Ethereum account address and information about the tokens involved. However, your private account address is never revealed in such transactions. Private account activity takes place as transactions on the Aztec blockchain, as explained in our technical overview. Sends between private accounts reveal no public information. Ethereum vault deposits and withdrawals, initiated by your private account, have a Nyx relayer as the sender address and show token type and amount. Again, there is no visible link to your private account address. However, if you transfer 1.034567 ETH from your Ethereum account into your private account and shortly thereafter a Nyx relayer deposits 1.034567 ETH into an Ethereum vault, people may suspect that your Ethereum account is connected to the vault deposit. So, you may wish to wait a bit between these actions and/or break your deposit into multiple parts depending on the level of Nyx vault traffic at the time. Public visibility by action type

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What is visible off-chain?

Your IP address and L1 wallet app (type, address, RPC providers, etc.) are visible to us. Your IP address is also visible to your L1 wallet app and the RPC provider it uses, as well as the RPC provider used by our code in your browser. We only store your IP addresses tied to your latest passkey use so that you can review this for your own security, and we do so using passkey-based, end-to-end encryption so that only you can read this data in your browser. We cannot view it. For enhanced privacy, you may wish to look at your wallet app’s privacy policy, use a custom RPC provider you trust in your wallet app, or use a method to obfuscate your IP address like a VPN, or TOR. If you use a VPN provider, check their logging policy to see if they record your IP address.