Starknet launches Shadow Accounts to keep DeFi wallets unlinkable

Every time you use the same wallet across DeFi, you leave a trail. On a public blockchain, that trail is open to anyone with a block explorer and some spare time. Starknet and StarkWare want to make that trail much harder to follow. On October 13, 2026, the pair unveiled Shadow Accounts, a privacy feature that lets users interact with DeFi apps through separate addresses that aren’t linked on-chain to their main wallet. How Shadow Accounts work Shadow Accounts live inside STRK20, Starknet’s privacy framework. Each one is a persistent pseudonymous address. Funding comes from shielded STRK20 balances. Value flows out of a privacy pool and into the shadow address, with a contract called ShadowAccountAnonymizer sitting in the middle to cut the connection back to the primary wallet. What the feature does not do is hide everything. A shadow account’s balances and transactions stay visible on-chain, just like any other address. The thing that disappears is the link between that account and its owner’s main wallet. The accounts are built to be per-dapp. A user could keep one identity for lending, another for providing liquidity, and a third for trading, with no on-chain thread tying them t...