FAQ

All privacy-focused cryptocurrencies involve design trade-offs.

Some attempt to enforce privacy by default using approaches that depend on long-term assumptions about anonymity. Others rely on advanced cryptography but permit both private and non-private transactions, requiring users to actively choose how to transact and increasing the risk of mistakes.

Veil is designed around a different approach.

Veil enforces privacy at the protocol level, with RingCT-based transactions forming the standard path for everyday use. While certain network processes such as mining will produce basecoin outputs. The design of Veil converges toward private stealth based transactions as the intended form of circulation. Privacy is not a per transaction option, but a structural property of how the network is meant to be used.

At the same time, Veil is designed with long-term sustainability in mind. The network includes mechanisms intended to support ongoing maintenance, security, and continued research into blockchain privacy. This focus on sustainability helps ensure that Veil can continue to evolve as technology and threats change over time.

We believe this combination privacy enforced by design, paired with a network structured for longevity sets Veil apart. Not simply as another privacy coin, but as a durable foundation for private digital money.

There are, in principle, four primary ways to obtain veil:

• You can mine for veil via Veil’s Proof-of-Work consensus system.
• You can purchase veil on a centralized or decentralized exchange.
• You earn veil as a reward by “staking” it in your wallet.
• You can perform “bounty” work for the project, receiving veil as compensation.

Veil was founded by James Burden (known in the project as 4x13), a long-time contributor in the cryptocurrency privacy space and the founder of projects such as PIVX. James helped establish Veil’s original vision, architecture, and privacy-first design principles.

Today, Veil operates as an open-source, community-driven project. Development, infrastructure, and ecosystem growth are maintained by a small group of contributors and community members who continue to build on the project’s original foundations. Like many decentralized networks, Veil does not rely on a single individual or central authority for its ongoing operation.

Veil uses a capped emission model with a maximum supply of 300 million VEIL.

The network launched with a 50 VEIL block reward, which decreased by 10 VEIL per year until reaching a minimum block reward of 10 VEIL. Once this level was reached, the block reward was designed to remain constant.

Emission continues at the fixed 10 VEIL block reward until the maximum supply is reached, ensuring predictable long-term issuance while maintaining incentives for network security.

Veil uses a hybrid consensus model that combines Proof-of-Work mining with Zerocoin-based Proof-of-Stake.

In Veil’s staking system Zerocoins are used to participate in block validation. Wallets holding eligible Zerocoins that are online, fully synced, and unlocked for staking automatically compete to validate new blocks.

When a wallet successfully stakes a block, it receives a staking reward as compensation for helping secure the network.

Veil’s privacy model is built around RingCT, which forms the core anonymity layer for everyday transactions. RingCT hides transaction amounts and obscures links between inputs and outputs.

Research: RingCT research paper

Veil also uses stealth addresses to prevent address reuse and reduce transaction linkability.

Background: Stealth Addresses in Cryptonote whitepaper

At the network layer, Dandelion helps limit the ability to associate transactions with originating IP addresses during propagation.

Research: Dandelion research paper

To improve efficiency and scalability, Veil incorporates Bulletproofs, which significantly reduce the size and verification cost of confidential transactions.

Research: https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1066.pdf

Zerocoin is not used as Veil’s primary anonymity layer. Instead, it’s role within the protocol is staking, while RingCT provides the core transaction privacy.

Stealth addresses allow users to share a single, static receiving address without exposing their transaction history. Unlike traditional Bitcoin addresses, where all incoming transactions are publicly linkable, stealth addresses prevent third parties from associating payments with a known address.

With Bitcoin-style addresses, preserving privacy requires careful address management, such as generating a new address for every transaction and avoiding any public association with those addresses.

Stealth addresses remove this burden. For each payment, the sender derives a unique one time public key using the recipient’s stealth address and random data. This one time destination cannot be linked back to the recipient’s public address on-chain, making it effectively impossible to trace payments to a single identity.

As a result, users can safely publish a static receiving address without revealing their transaction history or compromising privacy.