Shielded Zcash, in a browser tab

Most Zcash held in multi-chain wallets is transparent — a t-address, which is as public as a Bitcoin address and gives you none of what Zcash was built for. Shielded support is rare because it requires running zero-knowledge proving machinery client-side.

WRAITH ships fully shielded Orchard addresses in the browser, with sync and send validated on mainnet.

• t-address (transparent). Amounts, sender and recipient are all public on the block explorer. This is what most multi-chain wallets mean by 'Zcash support'.
• z-address (shielded). Amounts and parties are encrypted; validity is proved with zero-knowledge proofs. Orchard is the current shielded pool.
• What WRAITH does. Shielded Orchard addresses, shielded receive, shielded send, and shielding of transparent funds — all with the spending key held on your device.

The shielded engine is a WebAssembly build served from an isolated, cross-origin-isolated page inside the wallet, so the proving machinery gets the threaded memory it needs without loosening the security posture of the rest of the app. Loading it is on-demand: if you never open shielded Zcash, you never download it.

Shielded Zcash usually means a dedicated application, kept apart from the rest of your portfolio. In WRAITH it sits behind the same seed as your Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Monero, on the same balance screen, one tap away.

That is the practical difference: shielded Zcash you will actually use, because reaching it costs you nothing.