Get ZEC with NEAR Intents

To open a ztrash inbox you send a small shielded Zcash payment, so you need a little ZEC first. If you already hold another coin (ETH, BTC, SOL, USDC), you can swap it into native Zcash without a centralised exchange, without an account, and without KYC using NEAR Intents.

What NEAR Intents is

NEAR Intents is a cross-chain swap protocol. You state an “intent” (the asset you have and the asset you want), and a network of solvers competes to fill it, settling the trade across chains for you. There is no order book to manage and no exchange custody: the swap is trustless and the output is native ZEC, not a wrapped placeholder token. ETH, BTC, SOL, USDC and more can all be swapped straight into Zcash this way.

Why this route keeps ZEC private

Buying ZEC on a typical exchange ties the coins to your verified identity and a withdrawal address on a public ledger. Swapping through NEAR Intents skips the account entirely: nobody checks who you are, and no exchange takes custody along the way.

What the swap does not do is deliver privacy on its own. NEAR Intents pays out to transparent Zcash addresses only (the ones starting t1 or t3). Shielded and unified addresses are not accepted as a destination. So the ZEC arrives in the open, and shielding it is a step you take afterwards. Once it is shielded, its balance, history, and addresses stop appearing on chain, and the payment that opens a ztrash inbox proves nothing about the payer.

Option A: swap inside a Zcash wallet (recommended)

The simplest path is a wallet that has NEAR Intents built in, such as Zodl. The swap happens inside the wallet, which receives the transparent output and shields it for you, so you never copy an address by hand and never have to remember the shielding step.

  1. Install a Zcash wallet with swap support and open its Swap screen.
  2. Choose the coin you already hold as the source and ZEC as the destination, then enter an amount.
  3. Send the source funds when prompted. The solver fills the intent and the wallet lands your ZEC in your own shielded balance, ready to spend.

Option B: swap on the NEAR Intents app, then shield

  1. Open near-intents.org and connect the wallet holding your source coin.
  2. Pick your source asset and select ZEC as the output. For the destination, paste a transparent address (t1…) from your own Zcash wallet. A shielded or unified address will be rejected.
  3. Review the quote and confirm. When the intent settles, the ZEC arrives transparent, visible on the public ledger.
  4. In your wallet, shield the balance (often called “shield funds” or handled automatically by autoshielding). Pay the inbox only from the shielded balance.

Do not point a swap directly at your inbox’s payment address. Inbox addresses are shielded-only unified addresses, which NEAR Intents will refuse, and any service that accepted one would be told exactly which inbox your swap was funding. Always swap into your own wallet first, then pay from there. On why the transparent hop matters, see shielded vs transparent addresses.

How much you need

An inbox costs only a small fraction of a ZEC, so you don’t need to swap much, just enough to cover the inbox price shown plus the tiny network fee. Any leftover simply stays in your wallet for the next one.

Got a little shielded ZEC? Create an anonymous inbox →