We are committed to building the most private and secure wallet that exists. In pursuit of that goal we have released full Tor onion routing for the Pirate Chain Wallet.

Pirate Chain already supports zk-SNARKs transaction shielding which is the best of the best privacy tech today. Shielding transactions means that a particular transaction is indistinguishable from any other transaction in the network.

Why is shielding not enough?

Shielding protects from blockchain analysis and in this sense Pirate Chain offers very good protection with a high anonymity set. However, there exists more information than what is in the blockchain that can reduce anonymity sets. For example, the most obvious is network meta data. Nodes in the network can determine what IP address is initiating a particular transaction and what time and block it is confirmed. This does not give them the complete pictures, but it gives them more of the picture, which is not good for privacy.

Why does the Tor network enhance privacy?

Tor network will make it so your IP address is not associated with any transaction. If your IP address is associated with a transaction and your IP can be traced back to your identity then you have lost a lot of privacy. The Tor network that is fully utilized by Pirate Chain Wallet will make it so your IP address is never associated with a transaction and therefore enhance your privacy.