Shielding moves SOL from your public wallet into the pool. It is the way in — and, by default, the moment your balance starts earning.
Steps
- Open the Shield tab.
- Choose Earn as jitoSOL (the default) or Keep as SOL.
- Enter an amount. Max fills in your public balance minus 0.01 SOL, which stays behind for network fees.
- Leave To empty to shield into your own balance.
- Press Shield and approve the transaction in your wallet.
When it confirms, your Shielded balance rises by that amount and a new note appears under Your notes.
With Earn, the same transaction stakes your SOL with Jito and shields the jitoSOL it receives; the note shows both the token amount and what it is worth in SOL.
Shielding needs no zero-knowledge proof, so there is no proving step and nothing to download: it is as fast as any Solana transaction.
Shielding for someone else
Fill in To and the note belongs to them from the start:
- a shielded address (
zks…) — it lands in their balance directly; - a Solana address — the note belongs to that address, and you receive a claim code to pass on. See Claim a payment.
This is the simplest way to fund someone's shielded balance from a public wallet.
What the chain records
| Public | Hidden |
|---|---|
| Your wallet address | Who owns the new note |
| The amount shielded | Everything that happens to it afterwards |
A shield is a deposit, and deposits are visible — that is true of every shielded pool. Privacy begins after this step: once value is inside, moving it shows nothing.
Cost
A shield costs the ordinary Solana network fee: about 32,000 compute units for SOL, about 66,000 when it stakes on the way in. It creates no extra accounts, so there is no rent.
Next: Send privately.