Private Perps on Hyperliquid: ShieldTX vs NEAR
What's the difference between ShieldTX and NEAR's private perp offering?
On the surface, NEAR's private perps product and ShieldTX look similar, but there is one key difference. NEAR's solution uses the same Hyperliquid wallet for every trade, while ShieldTX uses a brand-new wallet for every trade. This significantly impacts the privacy assurances that each product can deliver, and the types of traders they are useful for.
ShieldTX: Unlinkable Onchain Trading
ShieldTX uses a brand-new account for every trade, making each trade unlinkable onchain. If a single trade is linked to you there is nothing onchain that links your previous, or future trades together.
For an onchain observer, every trade is unique. Copy-traders, competitors and media have nothing to link your trades onchain. This keeps your signal, identity and strategies private.
NEAR: Connected Onchain Trading
NEAR's private perps use the same Hyperliquid wallet for every trade, linking each trade to the next. The more you use this wallet, the more data there is for copy-traders, competitors and media to follow.
While the link between your funding account and your trading account is not publicly available, every trade you make through the account is linked. This exposes more and more information about how you trade, your preferred entries/exits, risk tolerance and preferred markets.
This has a few risks:
- If one trade is linked to you, then all trades are instantly linked to you.
- Onchain observers can build an accurate profile of your trading activity.
- Your PnL is still completely visible onchain
- Copy-traders don't need to know your funding wallet to copy a profitable trading wallet.
Because every trade is connected, the more you use the wallet the more exposed you become.
ShieldTX: ZK Proof Verification
ShieldTX is built on Avail's ZK appchain Nightshade allowing it to prove correctness without exposing your trading data to an external validator set. Its settlement rules enforce ownership, value conservation and protection against double-spend attacks, without publishing the underlying state onchain. Nightshade is Avail's dedicated privacy infrastructure.
NEAR: TEE Verification
NEAR's confidential Intents keep balances and trading activity inside a permissioned private shard connected to NEAR through a TEE-based bridge. A trusted execution environment (TEE) isolates code and data in protected hardware. The private validators and bridge are used to verify a user's trading activity.
ShieldTX vs NEAR Summary
ShieldTX and NEAR both break the public link between a user's funding wallet and trading wallets on Hyperliquid. Both execute trades on Hyperliquid directly, the difference is what happens when you use them regularly. On NEAR, your privacy decays with each subsequent trade, on ShieldTX, it remains consistent as each trade is funded from a brand-new wallet.
To public observers like copy-traders, crypto media and competitors it's much easier to link a trader using NEAR than it is on ShieldTX. While this may not matter to some traders, we believe those trading with enough size to move a market will prefer the additional guarantees that ShieldTX provides.
If you're interested in learning more about how ShieldTX works, or integrating it into your trading app, get in touch. Our product team will be happy to walk you through a product demo, answer any questions and help keep your edge protected.