Here is an uncomfortable reality: the people who benefit most from financial privacy are often the least able to deploy it properly. Running your own Zcash node is the privacy baseline. The moment you rely on third party infrastructure, metadata can leak. IP addresses, wallet queries, timing correlations, and usage patterns all become visible. For journalists, activists, or anyone operating under financial scrutiny, this metadata can be as sensitive as the transactions themselves. ...
Debunking Arkham's Zcash Claims
Last month, blockchain surveillance company Arkham announced that they’re able to trace 53% of ZCash transactions. As expected, the claim was framed for maximum impact. And just as quickly, the community pushed back and called it out for what it really was: marketing spin bordering on misinformation. So why is this claim fundamentally misleading? Understanding ZCash’s Pools ZCash supports four value pools: one transparent pool and three shielded pools. The transparent pool behaves much like Bitcoin: balances and transfers are publicly visible, and surveillance is trivial. The three shielded pools (Sprout, Sapling, and Orchard) are where ZCash’s privacy guarantees actually live. ...