How Mirage Compares
Mirage is designed around a different product question than most crypto privacy systems.
Many privacy tools ask: how can we hide the link between sender and recipient after a user enters a privacy set?
Mirage asks: how can a user make a private stablecoin payment that still feels like a normal payment?
Quick Comparison
| Dimension | Mixers and privacy pools | Privacy coins | Custodial services | Mirage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asset model | Usually fixed pools and denominations | Native privacy assets | Internal ledgers | Stablecoins on public chains |
| Privacy surface | Shared pool or shielded set | Private-by-default chain | Custodian records | Unique escrow plus independent node transfer |
| Onchain fingerprint | Obvious protocol contracts | Separate asset/network | Deposit and withdrawal from custodian | Ordinary-looking contract and stablecoin activity |
| Custody | Non-custodial, but pooled | Self-custodial | Custodial | Non-custodial, per-transaction escrow |
| User risk | Pool association and address tagging | Asset volatility and exchange restrictions | Counterparty and platform risk | No shared pool association |
| Execution model | Wait for anonymity set and withdrawals | Use separate network/asset | Request platform transfer | Node fronts liquidity and proves execution |
| Compliance model | Hard to separate unrelated users | Protocol-level exclusion is difficult | Platform-controlled | Wallet and node screening without custody |
| Integration path | User leaves app flow for privacy tool | User leaves chain/asset | User leaves self-custody | SDK/API-style integration into wallets and apps |
Mirage's USPs
Familiar Payment Experience
Mirage starts from the flow people already understand: choose a recipient, enter an amount, and send stablecoins. The privacy work happens around that flow rather than asking users to learn a new asset, wait for pool conditions, or manage a separate privacy wallet.
Fast Settlement
Mirage targets seconds on supported L2s and under 90 seconds on Ethereum mainnet, depending on network conditions. That matters for consumer and merchant-style payments, where waiting hours or days is not acceptable.
Usage Privacy
Mirage is designed so the public chain does not expose a single recognizable privacy surface. A user funds a temporary escrow, a node sends the recipient a normal stablecoin transfer, and the executor is reimbursed after proof. Those events are visible, but they are not anchored to a known mixer pool.
Stablecoin-Native Payments
Users do not need to buy a privacy coin, bridge to a privacy chain, or wrap funds into a special asset. Mirage is built for the stablecoins people already use for payroll, vendor payments, treasury movement, and everyday settlement.
No Shared Pool
Mirage does not combine unrelated user funds in a common anonymity pool. Each transaction has its own escrow contract. This reduces pooled-funds risk and avoids making a user's privacy depend on the behavior of every other participant in the same pool.
Verifiable Contract Variation
Mirage uses Azoth to generate escrow variants that preserve the same behavior. This is not about hiding what the escrow is allowed to do; the escrow logic is open source. It is about avoiding one repeated contract signature while keeping verification possible for nodes.
Confidential Execution
Nomad nodes process encrypted signals and provide liquidity for recipient transfers. Trusted execution environments are used as one layer to reduce node operator visibility, while bonds, proof-based reimbursement, screened operators, and multi-routing provide additional checks.
Compliance-Aware Orderflow
Mirage can screen wallets and route requests to screened node operators without taking custody of funds. That makes it better suited for legitimate payment use cases than systems where every participant inherits the same pool-level compliance risk.
Compared With Privacy Coins
Privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero can provide strong transaction privacy inside their own networks, but they ask users to adopt a separate asset and trust a separate ecosystem. That is a poor fit for many stablecoin payment use cases.
For businesses, DAOs, apps, and payment platforms, the practical gaps are clear:
- The user must leave the stablecoin they already want to send.
- Volatile assets are less suitable for payroll, invoices, and treasury movement.
- Exchange and on-ramp support can be limited or restricted.
- Integrations inherit a separate network's tooling, assumptions, and UX.
Mirage takes the opposite route: keep users on public-chain stablecoins and add private coordination around the payment.
Compared With Mixers and Privacy Pools
Mixers and privacy pools improve unlinkability by moving users through a shared privacy set. The tradeoff is detectability: the shared contract itself is visible, indexed, and easy to label.
That creates three problems for ordinary users:
- Their address can be tagged as having used a privacy tool.
- Their funds may be scrutinized by exchanges, on/off-ramps, wallets, and protocols.
- Their privacy depends on pool size, denomination matching, timing, and other users' activity.
Mirage avoids the shared-pool model. It uses transaction-specific escrows and independent node transfers, so there is no single pool contract that every user must touch.
It also avoids a common UX problem with mixers: users should not need to wait for pool depth, denomination matching, or withdrawal timing games before a payment feels complete.
Compared With Custodial Privacy
Centralized exchanges and payment services can hide some public-chain links by moving activity into internal ledgers. That can be convenient, but it requires custody, account controls, and platform permission.
Mirage targets a different model: privacy-preserving stablecoin transfers that remain self-custodial, settle on public chains, and can be integrated directly into wallets and applications.
What Mirage Does Not Claim
Mirage does not claim that no metadata exists or that every transaction becomes mathematically indistinguishable from every other transaction. Amounts, timing, gas behavior, contract deployment, and network conditions can still matter.
The claim is narrower and more useful: Mirage is designed to make private stablecoin payments simple and fast, avoid shared-pool contamination, and preserve a plausible public-chain footprint for normal stablecoin activity.