How to Acquire 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, and when the ZEC lands in a shielded address its balance, history, and addresses never appear on chain. That shielded ZEC is exactly what a ztrash inbox is paid with. That payment proves nothing about the payer.

Option A: swap inside a Zcash wallet

The simplest path is a wallet that has NEAR Intents built in, such as Zodl. Because the swap happens inside the wallet, the ZEC is deposited directly to a fresh shielded address you control, with no manual copy-paste of addresses.

  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 your ZEC arrives shielded, ready to spend.

Option B: swap on the NEAR Intents app

  1. Open near-intents.org and connect the wallet holding your source coin.
  2. Pick your source asset and select ZEC as the output. Paste your Zcash receiving address. Use a shielded address so the received ZEC stays private.
  3. Review the quote and confirm. When the intent settles, the ZEC arrives at the address you gave.

Either way, only swap into a shielded address if privacy is the point. Sending ZEC to a transparent address publishes it on the ledger like any other coin.

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 →