The anonymity set and timing advice

An anonymity set is the group a transaction can be hidden in. For a withdrawal from Lethe, the set is the wallets that deposited into that pool before it. The app and the public panel show its live size.

The pool starts empty. The first deposits have no crowd, and a shield followed by a withdrawal of the same amount can be matched immediately by anyone looking at the chain.

How to use it well

• Wait for deposits from other wallets after yours. The app counts them for you.
• Withdraw a different amount than you shielded. Round numbers stand out; so does your exact deposit minus a fee.
• Send inside the pool before you exit. A note that has moved once hides its origin better.
• Keep the receiving address separate from wallets you already use.

What the panel counts

The set size is the number of distinct wallets that have shielded into a pool, read from its Shield events by the indexer. It is a count of depositors, not of unspent notes: notes are private, so nobody can see how many are still unspent, including us.