Private Blockchain Transactions
Untrace supports public and private transaction workflows. Unlike public chains where every transaction, address balance, and smart contract interaction is visible to anyone, Untrace workflows aim to reveal only what the parties choose to reveal.
The Problem With Public Chains
On Ethereum, Solana, and most L1/L2 networks today:
- Every transaction is visible to every participant on the network
- Wallet balances are public
- Smart contract interactions are traceable
- Transaction graphs indexing
Institutions cannot use public chains for sensitive financial operations.
Selective Disclosure
Privacy on Untrace is not absolute — it is user-controlled. Parties can choose to disclose specific transaction details to specific verifiers without revealing anything else.
Use cases for selective disclosure:
- Regulatory compliance: A business proves to a regulator that a specific payment occurred, without revealing any other transactions
- Tax reporting: Prove total income to a tax authority without exposing individual counterparties
- Audit: Allow an auditor to verify a set of transactions without accessing the full transaction graph
- KYC/AML: Prove that funds did not originate from flagged sources, without revealing the source
Selective disclosure is enabled by the same ZK infrastructure used for dashboard proofs and attestations. A disclosure proof is generated for a specific claim, verified against public commitments or signed attestations, and reveals only the approved fields such as amount, timestamp, balance threshold, or statement period.
For document-derived claims, ZK is used after the user already has access to the relevant file in their dashboard. A bank statement PDF, for example, can support a proof that a balance or income threshold is satisfied without disclosing the PDF itself.
The user can also sign an attestation for an approved proof and mint a soulbound token on Ethereum or Solana. The token represents the claim or eligibility status, not the underlying document.
Private Smart Contracts
Untrace extends privacy to smart contract execution. Contract state, inputs, and outputs can all be kept private:
- Private inputs: peer-to-peer encryption
- Private events: Event emissions can be encrypted for specific recipients
This enables applications like private voting, sealed-bid auctions, confidential DeFi, and privacy-preserving identity verification. General private smart contract execution remains a later research track; the MVP should focus on vault retrieval, selective disclosure proofs, and attestations.