How ZeroTrace works.

ZeroTrace is a launchpad on Solana built around two problems: launches are traced back to the people behind them, and launches are sniped before retail can buy. Every part below exists to fix one of the two.

Deposits

You connect Phantom (or any wallet that exposes window.solana) and sign one free message. That signature opens a seven-day session and is checked with ed25519 on the server; nothing that moves SOL works without it.

A deposit is a plain SOL transfer that your wallet signs and sends. ZeroTrace reads the confirmed transaction from Solana and only credits it when your wallet signed it, the ZeroTrace deposit account received the SOL, and the transaction succeeded. Each signature is credited once. The minimum is 0.1 SOL.

The Vault

The Vault breaks the line between the wallet you deposit from and the account you launch or trade from.

Shielding

Pick a note size: 0.1, 0.5, 1, 5 or 10 SOL. Your browser makes a random 32-byte secret and sends only a commitment:

commitment = sha256("zt|" + size + "|" + secret)

The pool stores the commitment, the size and the time, with no wallet. Your browser shows you the note, zt-<size>-<secret>. That note is the only copy; ZeroTrace never sees the secret until you claim.

Why fixed sizes

Every 1 SOL note looks like every other 1 SOL note. The anonymity set for a note is every unspent note of the same size, shown live on the Vault page. The bigger the set, the less a claim says about who shielded it.

Mixing time

A note has to sit in the pool for 2 minutes before it can be claimed, so a shield and a claim can't be paired by timing alone. Waiting longer, while more notes of your size arrive, makes the link weaker still.

Claiming

Claiming sends the note and a ghost key. The server recomputes the commitment, checks it is in the pool, and records a nullifier, sha256("nf|" + secret), so the note can never be claimed twice. The SOL lands in the ghost. The claim request carries no wallet at all.

Ghosts

A ghost is an account controlled by a 32-byte key that lives in your browser. The server stores only an id derived from the key, "zt" + base58(sha256("ghost|" + key)), never the key itself. Whoever holds the key controls the ghost, so back it up from the Vault page. You can import it on another device, or start a fresh ghost per launch.

Ghosts can claim notes, launch, buy, sell and withdraw. A ghost withdrawal goes to any Solana address you paste and leaves after a random delay of 10 to 60 minutes, so the time you clicked doesn't match the time SOL arrives.

Launching

A launch needs a name, a ticker and one line about the coin. It costs 0.02 SOL. There is no dev allocation: the creator starts with nothing and buys in the Fair Window like everyone else.

• Stealth launch, from a ghost: the coin page shows the creator as ghost. No wallet is attached.
• Wallet launch: the coin page shows your shortened wallet. $ZERO pass holders pay half the fee.

Every coin trades on a constant-product curve with 1,000,000,000 supply and a 30 SOL virtual reserve: price = reserve / supply, and every buy and sell keeps reserve × supply constant.

The Fair Window

Every launch opens with a sealed window of 60 seconds. During it:

• Buys are escrowed. The coin page shows how many bids are in, never the amounts.
• Each buyer can put at most 2 SOL in.
• Nobody can sell.

When the window closes, all bids are added up and bought from the curve in one fill. That one fill has one average price, and every bidder gets tokens in proportion to their SOL. A bid placed in the first second and a bid placed in the last second get exactly the same price. There is no first block to win, so there is nothing to snipe or bundle.

The guard

For 10 minutes after the window, every coin is guarded:

• No single holder can pass 2% of the supply.
• Each holder waits 3 seconds between trades.

Holders are tracked per wallet and per ghost. Every trade the guard refuses is counted in the public "snipes blocked" figure.

Trading

Trades fill against the curve in the order they arrive. There is no public pending pool, so there is nothing for a bot to see before your trade lands and nothing to sandwich. Every trade carries your price limit (1%, 3% or 10%); if the curve has moved past it, nothing fills and nothing is charged. The trading fee is 1%.

Trades show a holder tag, a short hash that stays the same for one holder on one coin. You can see that the same holder traded twice; you can't see the wallet or ghost.

Trace scanner

The scanner reads any Solana address straight from Solana RPC: recent signatures, balance, the first transaction (to find who funded it), and SOL transfers in the most recent transactions (to find the wallets it deals with). It turns that into an exposure score from 0 to 100:

It's the view any onlooker, copy-trader or sniper bot already has. Run your deployer through it before you launch from it.

$ZERO

$ZERO is the access pass to the private side of ZeroTrace. Holding 1,000,000 $ZERO in a connected wallet gives you:

• Fee-free shielding (others pay 0.5% per note).
• Half-price wallet launches.

Balances are read from Solana with getTokenAccountsByOwner and cached for a minute. The pass applies to wallets, because shielding is where a wallet meets the Vault. Launch, trading and Vault fees fund the protocol and the tools that come next.

Parameters

API

GET  /api/state                 coins, pool sets, counters, parameters
GET  /api/coin/:id              one coin with trades and price curve
GET  /api/trace?addr=           Trace scanner
GET  /api/session?wallet=       message to sign for a session
POST /api/account               { wallet }
POST /api/deposit               { wallet, tx }
POST /api/shield                { wallet, auth, size, commitment }
POST /api/launch | buy | sell   { wallet, auth, ... }
POST /api/claim                 { note, key }
POST /api/g/account             { key }
POST /api/g/launch | buy | sell { key, ... }
POST /api/g/withdraw            { key, to, amount }

Buys and sells take { id, amount, minOut }. Launches take { name, ticker, desc }.

FAQ