ZK privacy everywhere: How Aleph Zero is making it happen

Aleph Zero is bringing zero-knowledge privacy to multiple blockchain ecosystems—opening up for the majority of crypto users. Let’s break it down on how we’re rolling it out.

ZK Privacy through the Shielder Network

Shielder Network is a powerful privacy solution that comprises smart contracts, relayers, and cryptographic frameworks. It acts as the backend for private, shielded transactions—ensuring that users can interact with blockchain applications—while maintaining full confidentiality. Designed for multi-chain deployment, Shielder Network is now extending its user privacy benefits beyond Aleph Zero.

As part of the deployment, the Shielder Network system has to be deployed natively on each of the supported chains. This is why we’ll start with the first two networks and add more every few weeks to ensure proper GTM across various ecosystems. Currently, we’re assessing deployments on 11 popular chains.

AZERO holders will benefit from the fees related to the privacy system–more details on that to follow. You can read more about the relayer network here.

Shielder-SDK—the key to rolling out Shielder Network

To seamlessly integrate Shielder Network across chains, Aleph Zero’s Shielder-SDK enables protocols to implement private transactions. Any dApp can integrate Shielder-SDK to offer ZK privacy-enhanced features. Shielder Network’s chief initial use case is wallets—including mobile, browser extensions, and web wallets—and its capabilities already extend beyond simple transactions.

We will first pursue the integration of our privacy solutions in wallets, to allow users to experience privacy seamlessly in the apps they already use, addressing the existing user base of these wallets. From there, our goal will be to integrate privacy everywhere – in DeFi protocols, across chains and ecosystems.

What use cases does ZK privacy fit?

Privacy works best when user actions are spaced out over time, making it difficult to connect deposits and withdrawals. Ideal use cases include:

• Yield farming: Users stake their assets for extended periods—making it beneficial to obfuscate their entry and exit points;
• Voting protocols: Voting rights are often granted long before they are used—allowing privacy-enhanced systems to separate identity from the act of voting;
• Liquidity provision for DEXes and lending protocols: Ensuring anonymity in providing liquidity shields market makers and lenders.

Even users of non-private wallets can benefit from Shielder-SDK, as it allows privacy-enhanced interactions within public dApps.

Common Mobile & Shielded Yield: A unified DeFi privacy solution

Shielder Network and Shielder-SDK are already being integrated with Common Mobile and its Shielded Yield feature to create a seamless privacy-first DeFi experience. These tools work together to provide users with enhanced security, anonymous yield generation, and shielded transactions.

Common Mobile users will have built-in privacy features, but there’s also the Web App –a simple tool to break the trace while using your current wallet.

How shielded transactions are tracked

A critical concern in private transactions is tracking and managing transaction history. Within the Shielder Network, all shielded transactions are recorded on-chain, but the details remain confidential. Each transaction includes cryptographic metadata that allows only the user—or anyone they share their viewing key with—to identify and access them. Essentially, users will be able to:

• Exclusively view their transaction history in the wallet they used (Common Wallet or another wallet integrating Shielder-SDK);
• Share viewing keys selectively for transparency where necessary (e.g., tax reporting);
• Access their activity history even if using a new device.

By making ZK privacy accessible, composable, and available across multiple chains, Aleph Zero is empowering both users and developers to engage with blockchain applications securely, privately, and efficiently.

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