Confidential Transfer

What are Confidential Transfers?

Confidential transfers enable you to transfer tokens between token accounts without revealing the transfer amount. This is useful for privacy-preserving transactions. Only the transfer amounts and token balances are private. The token account addresses remain public.

• Protocol Overview - Details on the underlying cryptographic protocol
• Quick Start Guide - Setup and basic CLI commands
• Confidential Balances Cookbook - Code snippets on how to use the Confidential Transfer extension

How does it work?

The Confidential Transfer extension adds instructions to the Token Extension program that allows you to transfer tokens between accounts without revealing the transfer amount.

The basic flow of confidential token transfers is as follows:

1. Create a mint account with the confidential transfer extension.
2. Create token accounts with confidential transfer extension for the sender and recipient.
3. Mint tokens to the sender account.
4. Deposit sender's public balance to confidential pending balance.
5. Apply sender's pending balance to confidential available balance.
6. Confidentially transfer tokens from sender token account to recipient token account.
7. Apply recipient's pending balance to confidential available balance.
8. Withdraw recipient's confidential available balance to public balance.

For more details on the steps in the confidential transfer flow, see the corresponding pages:

The diagram below shows a detailed sequence of the basic flow for confidential token transfers:

Confidential Transfer Instructions

The full list of Confidential Transfer extension instructions are as follows: