Guide
Start with your Zcash wallet
You pay in ZEC from your own Zcash wallet, and your ZEC comes back to it. You do not need a Solana wallet, and you do not need SOL.
Using Phantom or Solflare instead? Start with your Solana wallet
What happens to my money
On the way in. Your ZEC leaves your Zcash wallet and goes through NEAR Intents, a separate service that moves ZEC between Zcash and Solana. It lands in your Sapling account, and the buy runs there.
While you hold. Your coins sit in your Sapling account. Only your passkey controls it.
On the way out. When you sell, the ZEC goes back to your Zcash wallet, again through NEAR Intents.
If a buy cannot run. The ZEC comes back to your Zcash wallet, less the fees of sending it back.
What Sapling cannot do. NEAR Intents can delay a transfer or hold it. Sapling cannot speed it up or release it. Coins can go to zero.
01Get a Zcash wallet: Noir or Zodl
Noir works in your browser. Press Connect Noir at the top of the page, and approve in Noir.
Zodl is a phone app. It cannot connect to a site, so there is nothing to press here: you paste its address when you buy (step 2).
Either one works. Put a little ZEC in it first.
Top of every page. Noir connects here; Zodl does not connect, you paste its address when you buy. 02Open a coin and choose Zcash wallet
Open any coin from Coins. In its box, stay on Buy, choose Zcash wallet, and type an amount in ZEC.
With Zodl, press Pay with Zodl instead. In Zodl, tap Receive, copy the Zcash Transparent Address (it starts with t1) and paste it. Your sales and payouts will go to that address. It then offers one optional step, Zodl's shielded address: that is where a recovery code would be sent if you ever lose your passkey.
During the beta, one order is at most 1 ZEC.
On a coin's page. 03Your first buy creates your Sapling account
Press Create account and buy. A small Sapling window opens.
Your device asks for your face, your fingerprint or your PIN (Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello). The site calls all of them Face ID. The first one creates your passkey. The second one checks your account.
The passkey is the only key to your account. There is no seed phrase to write down and no app to install for the account.
This happens once. After that the button just says Buy with Noir.
The costs are shown before you pay. The button is off until they are. 04Send the ZEC, then wait a few minutes
Noir: its pop-up opens. Approve it.
Zodl: the page shows one amount and one address. On your phone, copy each and paste it into Zodl's Send. From another device, tap Scan in Zodl and scan the code. Send exactly that amount, before the time shown.
The page then says Buying… It usually takes 5–10 minutes, because Zcash needs a few confirmations. When it says Bought, the coins are in your account.
If the buy cannot run, the page says so and the ZEC goes back to your Zcash wallet.
With Zodl: one payment, exactly this amount, to exactly this address. 05Sell with one tap
On the coin's page choose Sell, then Zcash wallet, and type how much to sell.
The box shows the least ZEC you will get and your Zcash address in full. Press Sell with Face ID. That one tap is the whole sale.
The ZEC reaches your Zcash wallet in about 2 minutes, through NEAR Intents. It arrives at your transparent address: this payout is not shielded.
Harvest works the same way: in the coin's Harvest panel choose Zcash wallet, then Harvest ZEC with Face ID.
Your Zcash address is shown in full. Check it before you tap. 06Launch your own coin with ZEC
On Plant, give the coin a name, a ticker and an image. Choose Plant from a Zcash wallet, then Continue. You pay the costs in ZEC, the same way you pay for a buy.
Your 0.80% of every trade can go to you or to the coin's holders. A first buy is off unless you turn it on; it runs right after the planting, so others can buy before you.
Shielded launch. Tick Shielded launch to pay from your shielded balance into a brand-new account made only for that coin. It hides who launched the coin. You pick a fixed amount (0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1 ZEC): the costs come out of it and the rest is your first buy.
On the Plant page, under the coin's name, ticker and image. 07Fees and rewards come home in ZEC
If you planted a coin, your share of its trades is paid to your Sapling account in ZEC. If you hold a coin that pays its holders, your rewards land there too.
You do nothing. Sapling sends the ZEC in your account home to your Zcash wallet by itself, once there is more than 0.0014 ZEC.
A shielded launch's account is the exception: there you press Collect with Face ID on its account page, and the ZEC arrives shielded.
On your account page (press your wallet at the top). ZEC goes home once there is more than 0.0014 ZEC.
Your account is yours
Only your passkey controls it. It is an account on Solana, kept at Turnkey, with your passkey as its only owner. Your account page can ask Turnkey itself who controls it, with your Face ID.
Sapling can only do what you asked for. It runs the buys you pay for and the sales you approve. A program on Solana, the guard, checks every one of them against its rules, and refuses anything else.
You can leave at any time. Export key gives you the account's key, to use in any Solana wallet. Stop Sapling acting for this wallet cuts Sapling off for good.
If you lose your device. Before that happens, press Add a backup passkey and make one on a second device. Without one you can still recover: Noir signs a recovery, and Zodl receives a code as a memo (if you gave it a shielded address at the start). A recovered passkey can sell, harvest and cash out; it cannot buy.
Who can change the guard. Only a 2-of-3 multisig (3eCXkzzn85PLe9zWmzPRAhxioNZRzaHcarL5yz57sMtf): two of its three members must approve an upgrade. No single key can. The guard can still be upgraded; it is not fixed for good.
Questions
How long does it take?
A buy usually takes 5–10 minutes after you pay: Zcash needs a few confirmations first. A sale reaches your Zcash wallet in about 2 minutes. A shielded payout takes about half an hour.
Is there a minimum, or a maximum?
A buy has to be bigger than its costs. The box shows the costs before you pay, and says so if the amount is too small. During the beta one order is at most 1 ZEC.
ZEC left in your account goes home once there is more than 0.0014 ZEC. Less than that waits for the next payout.
A shielded payout is at least 0.004 ZEC and at most 100 ZEC.
What does it cost?
Everything is shown before you pay, each cost with an “at most”. There are four kinds:
- The trade fee, 2.00%, inside the price. Everyone pays it, from any wallet. pump.fun adds its own fee on top.
- The Zcash account fee, 0.5% of each buy, sale and harvest made from a Zcash wallet. This is Sapling's.
- Network and signing costs: Solana's fees and rent, converted to ZEC.
- NEAR Intents' fee for moving the ZEC between Zcash and Solana. It is a small flat fee per transfer, and it is theirs.
When Sapling sends leftover ZEC home, or sends a payment back, it takes at most 0.0002 ZEC for it.
What if something fails?
If a buy cannot run, the ZEC goes back to your Zcash wallet, less the fees of sending it back. If the price moves past your limit on a sale, nothing is sold.
If you send the wrong amount, or send it too late, NEAR Intents refunds what it received to your Zcash address, minus its refund fee. That can take a while.
Your account page lists every order and where it stands.
What is private, and what is not?
A normal account is public. Its coins and its trades are visible on Solana, like any wallet's. Its payouts go to a transparent Zcash address, so they are public on Zcash too, and so is the link between that address and your account.
A shielded launch hides one thing: who launched the coin. It is paid from your shielded balance into a new account that nothing links to your others, and its payouts arrive as shielded notes at an address only Sapling's payout service reads. The coin, its account and every trade stay public.
If you want ZEC from a normal payout to be private, shield it in your Zcash wallet after it arrives.
Can I use more than one device?
Yes. On the new device press Find my account (Face ID), with a passkey that is on the account. A backup passkey made on that device does everything the first one does.
Stay safe
No DMs, no keys. Sapling never DMs you first and never asks for your seed phrase or keys. Anyone who does is not Sapling.
Check every character of an address. Look-alike addresses copy only the first and the last few. Take an address from your own wallet's Receive screen, never from your history or an explorer.
Official links only. These are Sapling's only channels, and this site is sapling.cash:
More detail: Docs & FAQ·Risk disclosure·Your account