Privacy best practices

Staying private in crypto: best practices with Common Trace Breaker

Privacy is a growing concern in the blockchain space. While traditional blockchains offer transparency, they often do so at the expense of user confidentiality. Common aims to change this by introducing zero-knowledge privacy for Web3.

Here’s how you can use the Trace Breaker feature in the Common Web App effectively to protect your on-chain identity.

1. Shield your assets regularly

The more actions you perform on a single public account, the easier it becomes for observers to analyze your holdings, behavior patterns, and possibly identify you—shielding helps disrupt that visibility.

Start by transferring your tokens from your public addresses into the Shielder. This process moves your assets from the public chain into a private pool, breaking the traceable link between addresses.

It’s visible on-chain that you’re depositing assets to Shielder–but observers won’t notice whether your assets are still shielded or if you’ve moved them elsewhere.

2. Use fresh addresses for interactions

To prevent correlation between transactions:

• Generate a new address for each withdrawal or interaction with the public chain.

• Avoid reusing addresses when receiving or sending funds from the Shielder.

3. Time-delay your transactions

Avoid creating predictable patterns:

• Wait random intervals before moving funds in or out.

• Do not withdraw the exact amount you deposited—same amounts wil make tracing easier.

4. Minimize metadata leakage

When transacting:

• Avoid posting associated wallet information publicly (e.g., ENS names or addresses linked on social media).

• Consider your browser and device fingerprinting—use privacy-focused tools like Tor or VPNs where appropriate.

6. Understand the limitations

Privacy in blockchain is never absolute. While Shielder provides robust privacy using zk-SNARKs:

• It depends on user behavior for best result.

• Your actions outside of Shielder (e.g., centralized exchanges, KYC) can still compromise privacy.