What is a blockchain?
A blockchain is a database shared across thousands of computers — and once data is written to it, no single person or company can change it.
The analogy. Imagine a spreadsheet thousands of people have a copy of. When you write a new row, everyone updates their copy. Nobody can secretly edit an old row because everyone else’s copy would disagree. The blockchain is that spreadsheet, using cryptography instead of trust to enforce consistency.
Transactions on a blockchain are:
- Cryptographically secured — you need a private key to send funds. No password resets, no customer service.
- Permanent — once confirmed, a transaction cannot be reversed, deleted or altered.
- Permissionless — anyone can send one. No bank approval, no KYC at the protocol level.
- Publicly visible — every transaction is visible to anyone. Great for auditability; a problem for privacy.
Sanect is a blockchain. Its currency is SNCT, and it adds one major feature to the standard model: optional sender privacy.
Why does blockchain privacy matter?
The property that makes blockchains trustworthy — permanent public records — creates a serious privacy problem.
Every transaction you have made, every wallet that ever paid you and every token you hold is visible to anyone with an internet connection, forever.
Real scenario. You share your address with a new business contact to receive a payment. They look it up on the explorer and can now see every salary you’ve received, every donation you’ve made, your portfolio, and everyone who has ever sent you money.
This is not hypothetical — analytics firms do it commercially. It creates real risks:
- Financial surveillance — governments, corporations or individuals monitor your spending without consent.
- Targeted theft — a visible large balance makes you a target for social engineering and physical threats.
- Business intelligence leaks — competitors infer vendor relationships, payroll costs and strategy from on-chain data.
- Discrimination — future recipients of your funds can see where they have been.
Sanect’s shielded transfers break this graph. The payment is confirmed on chain, but the sender is never revealed — guaranteed mathematically, not by policy.
How do zero-knowledge proofs work?
A zero-knowledge proof lets you prove you know something without revealing what it is. It sounds impossible; it has been in production for over a decade.
The classic analogy. You claim to know where Waldo is. You cover the puzzle with a large sheet that has a small hole cut exactly over Waldo. I see Waldo through the hole — I’m convinced you know — but I still have no idea where in the puzzle he is.
On a blockchain, a proof lets you show:
- “I have funds I’m authorised to spend” — without revealing which funds or how much.
- “I know the secret for this account” — without revealing the secret.
- “This transaction is valid” — without revealing sender, receiver or amount.
Sanect’s circuit is written in Noir and proven with UltraHonk on Aztec’s Barretenberg backend. Its key property: no per-circuit trusted setup. Older systems needed a ceremony whose secret randomness had to be destroyed — anyone who kept a copy could forge proofs. A universal, already-public SRS removes that risk.
When you send a shielded transaction, a proof is generated in your browser. The chain verifies it is correct without ever learning who sent it.
What is a wallet and how does it work?
A wallet is a pair of keys. Your public key — your address — is what you share. Your private key proves you own it and authorises every transaction.
When you create a wallet it generates a seed phrase of 12 or 24 words that encodes the private key. Lose your device and you can recover from the phrase — but anyone with the phrase controls the funds. There is no recovery beyond it.
Every transaction costs a small gas fee paid to validators. On Sanect, gas is paid in SNCT and is tiny — a transfer costs a fraction of a cent.
The analogy. A wallet is like an email account: your address is what people send to; your private key is the password. The difference is there is no “forgot password” button.
- Never share your private key. No legitimate service or team member will ask for it.
- Use a hardware wallet for large amounts. Ledger or Trezor keep keys offline.
- Check every transaction before signing — recipient, amount, network.
- Keep the seed phrase offline. Paper, not notes apps or cloud storage.
How does staking work?
Proof of stake replaces mining’s energy cost with economic collateral: validators lock tokens as a guarantee of honest behaviour.
Sanect uses delegated proof of stake. You don’t need to run a validator — delegate SNCT to one and they run the infrastructure. Your tokens stay yours and you earn a proportional share of rewards. Validators earn from block rewards (inflation) and transaction fees, and set a commission they keep before passing the rest to delegators.
Slashing keeps validators honest: double-signing burns 5% of stake; extended downtime burns 0.01%. Penalties hit validator and delegators alike — choose reliable operators. Unstaking has a 21-day unbonding period during which tokens earn nothing and cannot move; it ensures misbehaviour can still be punished after a withdrawal attempt.
Concrete example. You delegate 10,000 SNCT to a validator with 5% commission while inflation is 15%. Your annual yield is about 1,425 SNCT (15% × 10,000 × 0.95), compounding automatically.
What can you build on Sanect?
Sanect is a full ecosystem, live on mainnet: seven core products that compose together from one wallet.
- DEX — a Uniswap V2 fork with 15 pairs; swap and provide liquidity.
- Staking — delegate to a 50-validator set with ~400 ms blocks; rewards every block.
- .snct names — human-readable addresses, sealed-bid auctions, a marketplace, reverse records.
- Shielded transfers — shield, send privately, unshield. Proofs in the browser.
- Bridge — Hyperlane to Ethereum with 14 assets, one canonical token each.
- LP farm — 100M SNCT over five years across four SNCT pairs, TVL-tiered caps.
- Governance — on-chain proposals and votes with bonded SNCT.
A typical flow: bridge USDC from Ethereum, swap for SNCT, stake half, shield the other half for private transfers, register a name, vote on a proposal — from the same wallet, all earning airdrop points.
The airdrop connection. Every product earns points in the airdrop matrix. 300M SNCT — 30% of supply — is distributed across four phases over 450 days.