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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallShort answer: Starknet’s STRK20 system can hide the details of transfers inside its privacy pool—sender, recipient, amount, token type and spent notes—while preserving the same wallet keys. It does not make every DeFi action anonymous. Deposits and withdrawals remain public, activity routed through public liquidity can reveal amounts and strategy, and shadow accounts expose their own balances and positions even when they are unlinkable to your main wallet.
Think of STRK20 as a selective privacy layer for assets, not a separate chain or an invisibility switch. The practical benefit is reduced linkage between your everyday wallet and supported DeFi activity, with disclosure controls when an auditor or other authorised party needs to inspect it.
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What STRK20 changes—and what it does not
STRK20 lets a supported ERC-20 move between a transparent state and a shielded state on Starknet. Shielding is a state change recorded by the protocol; you are not moving to a different network, and the same underlying asset can later be unshielded back into a normal public balance.
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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →When you deposit, the pool records an encrypted note representing your asset. A private transfer consumes an existing note and creates one or more new notes. A zero-knowledge STARK proof lets Starknet check that the spender owns the note, that it has not already been spent and that values balance correctly, without revealing the transfer’s private fields. The chain updates pool state after verifying the proof.
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This design gives confidentiality inside the pool, but the public chain still carries the events needed to enter and leave it. A useful mental model is public edge, private middle, public edge.
The STRK20 lifecycle, step by step
- Deposit (public to private). Your wallet sends an ERC-20 from a normal address to the STRK20 pool. The public transaction reveals the sending address, receiving pool address, token and amount, as well as its timing.
- Shielded state. The wallet stores the note data needed to spend the private balance. The pool contains encrypted notes and publishes nullifiers and other protocol metadata, but observers cannot read a note’s owner or value from those fields alone.
- Private transfer. The wallet proves ownership and non-double-spending in zero knowledge, then creates replacement notes for the recipient or for another account controlled by you. The pool transaction does not disclose sender, recipient, amount, token type or which prior notes were spent.
- Optional DeFi action. A supported anonymizer contract can unshield an input note, execute an application action and shield the output again. The exact privacy result depends on what the application and its liquidity venues expose.
- Withdrawal (private to public). Unshielding creates a normal ERC-20 balance. The destination address, token, amount and timing of that withdrawal are public, and the resulting balance behaves like any other transparent Starknet balance.
What a private transfer hides versus what remains observable
| Inside the STRK20 pool | Still visible on Starknet |
|---|---|
| Sender identity for the private transfer | Public deposit and withdrawal addresses |
| Recipient identity | Deposit and withdrawal amounts |
| Transfer amount | Entry and exit timing |
| Token type used in the private transfer | Encrypted notes, nullifiers and required protocol metadata |
| Which notes were spent | That an account or contract interacted with the pool |
Someone watching the chain can therefore see that funds entered or left the pool and can study timing and public metadata. They cannot simply read the private note contents from the pool transaction. Privacy is strongest when many users are shielding and transferring similar assets around the same periods; a small pool of possible users makes statistical inference easier.
How DeFi privacy works in practice
Swaps through an anonymizer
An anonymizer contract is designed to break the direct public link between your ordinary wallet and a DeFi swap. In the flow described for Starknet, the contract unshields an input note, routes the trade through existing liquidity and redeposits the output as a private note in one atomic operation. The example architecture uses avnu for routing and Ekubo as a liquidity venue.
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This is confidential rather than fully private. The public liquidity leg still processes the trade, so amounts moving through that venue can be visible. Observers may see the swap’s application-side action, token pair, timing and slippage-related data exposed by the venue. The privacy gain is that those public events are not automatically tied to your main wallet address; it is not that the swap disappears.
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Lending and borrowing
The early Vesu flow illustrates the boundary clearly. You unshield collateral, supply it to the lending market and borrow USDC in the normal public application. The collateral remains visible while it is locked in that market. You can then shield the borrowed asset, reducing the public link between the borrowing event and later spending, but the market-side supply, collateral and borrow actions remain observable.
Anyone analysing the lending protocol can still inspect the public position, its timing and the amounts supplied or borrowed. STRK20 does not turn a public lending position into an encrypted one; it can protect the funds before or after that position and reduce linkage to your main address.
Staking and liquid-staking assets
A normal staking transaction is public. The described Endur flow allows liquid-staking assets such as xSTRK and xstrkBTC to be shielded after that staking step. That can keep later transfers of the shielded asset inside the private pool, but the original staking event and any public contract interaction remain visible. Wallet and application integration is phased, so support for a particular staking route can change.
Shadow accounts for per-application unlinkability
A shadow account uses a persistent deterministic address for a particular dapp and nonce. The address has no public on-chain link to your main wallet, which can prevent a casual observer from grouping every application action under one identity.
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The account itself is transparent. Its balances, contract calls and open positions are public, and a chain analyst can follow activity at that shadow address. Shadow accounts therefore provide unlinkability, not hidden state. They are useful when your priority is keeping one application’s history separate from your primary wallet rather than concealing the application’s position.
Comparing the available privacy patterns
| Pattern | Primary privacy property | What remains public | DeFi composability | Operational needs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ordinary Starknet wallet | No pool-level confidentiality or wallet unlinkability | Address, balances, calls, amounts and positions | Broad compatibility with public dapps | Standard wallet and transaction signing |
| STRK20 shielded balance and private transfer | Hides sender, recipient, amount, token type and spent notes inside the pool | Deposit and withdrawal legs, timing, encrypted notes, nullifiers and protocol interaction | Supported private operations and integrations | Compatible wallet, note management, proving and submission; viewing-key backup for disclosure |
| Anonymizer contract | Reduces the direct link between a main wallet and an application action | Public liquidity leg, app-side action and amounts exposed by that action | Can route through existing Starknet liquidity | Wallet API plus an application-specific anonymizer contract |
| Shadow account | Unlinks a dapp address from the main wallet | That account’s balances, calls and positions | Requires dapp support for the account pattern | Deterministic address per dapp and nonce; account management |
Wallet support and the user workflow
The June 2026 launch materials identify Ready X and Xverse as first-phase wallet interfaces. They can shield assets, show shielded balances, make private transfers, support selected private swaps and unshield when transparency is required. Availability and supported actions are wallet- and dapp-dependent, so check the capability advertised by the application rather than assuming every wallet exposes every operation.
The Wallet API is intended to keep the difficult parts in the wallet: key custody, note handling, proof generation and transaction submission. Depending on support, the API exposes shield, private-transfer, withdraw, shadow-account and swap operations. Broader private DeFi generally needs both this wallet layer and an anonymizer contract built for the application.
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- Confirm support. Use a wallet and dapp combination that explicitly supports the operation you need. A normal public swap interface may not understand shielded notes.
- Shield only the amount you need. The deposit is public, so choose the source address and timing with that exposure in mind.
- Review the privacy boundary. Before signing an anonymizer transaction, identify which leg touches public liquidity and which output is redeposited as a note.
- Protect note and viewing-key data. Losing the wallet’s ability to recover notes can make a shielded balance difficult to manage. Viewing keys should be backed up separately and shared only with intended auditors or counterparties.
- Unshield deliberately. Select the destination address and amount knowing that the withdrawal becomes a public ERC-20 event.
Fees, availability and changing parameters
The Starknet private-DeFi article states a fee of 4 STRK per private transaction as a 2026 launch parameter. Treat that figure as volatile: network, wallet and application settings can change, so verify the current fee in the signing interface before confirming a transaction. The figure is not a promise that every shield, transfer, swap or withdrawal will cost the same amount.
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Wallet support, application integrations and the set of assets accepted by a privacy flow are also phase-dependent. A wallet may support private transfers while lacking a particular private swap, lending or staking route. The safest expectation is capability detection at the dapp level, followed by a transaction preview that identifies public and shielded legs.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why anonymity-set size matters
Pool privacy is collective. If only a few users shield the same asset, an observer has fewer plausible senders, recipients or amounts to consider. As more users shield and transact, the anonymity set grows and an individual private transfer is harder to distinguish from others. This is why shielding a balance does not guarantee the same privacy in every period or asset pool.
Your own behaviour can also shrink the practical anonymity set. A distinctive public deposit followed immediately by a matching withdrawal, or a public DeFi action whose amount mirrors a private note, can create a strong correlation even when the internal transfer fields are hidden. STRK20 protects the protocol-level fields; it cannot erase patterns you publish at the edges.
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Selective disclosure and audits
Privacy is not an all-or-nothing choice. Viewing keys are designed for scoped, user-specific disclosure. You can provide an authorised auditor or other approved party with the information needed to inspect selected activity without making the entire pool readable to the public.
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This supports compliance and accounting workflows while preserving ordinary observer privacy. It also means the phrase “private balance” should not be read as “inaccessible to every party under every circumstance.” Anyone who receives the relevant viewing capability can inspect the scope you authorise, and public deposits, withdrawals and application interactions remain independently observable.
Common misconceptions to avoid
- “Shielded means anonymous.” No. STRK20 hides specified pool fields; it does not guarantee that a person cannot be inferred from timing, entry and exit behaviour or public DeFi activity.
- “The whole lending position is encrypted.” No. A public lending market can still show collateral, supplies, borrows and positions. Shielding the borrowed asset later changes its wallet exposure, not the market’s history.
- “A shadow account hides its balance.” No. It hides the public link to the main wallet while leaving the shadow account’s own state transparent.
- “A Paymaster removes the public deposit or withdrawal.” No. A Paymaster can decouple the submitting address, but the public entry or exit event and its amount still exist.
- “Unshielding keeps the asset private.” No. Unshielding deliberately restores transparent ERC-20 behaviour.
A practical decision framework
Use a shielded balance and private transfer when the sensitive fact is who paid whom, how much moved or which token changed hands inside the pool. Use an anonymizer when the main concern is preventing a public DeFi action from being directly tied to your everyday wallet, and accept that the application-side amounts may still be visible. Use a shadow account when you want separate public identities for different dapps and can tolerate transparent balances and positions at those addresses.
For every flow, mark three points before signing: the address and amount entering the privacy system, the public contracts or liquidity venues touched in the middle and the address and amount leaving it. Privacy is strongest when those edges do not create an obvious one-to-one match, when the relevant anonymity set is large and when you keep viewing-key access under control.
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