Research note 05
Counting the real crowd
The number of notes in the pool is not the privacy you get. What an observer can rule out matters more.
Notes in the pool
12,000
Plausible senders
12,000
Effective anonymity
13.6 bits
Headcount is not privacy
A pool of twelve thousand notes sounds safe. But if amounts, timing, root choice and gas funding each rule out most of them, the real set of plausible senders behind one exit can be a handful.
Measuring it
The useful number is the effective anonymity set: how many notes remain equally plausible after every observable is applied, often expressed in bits. Each bit is a halving. The model on this page uses assumed factors to show the shape of the problem, not measured ones.
The plan is a public dashboard that estimates this from real pool data once a pool exists.
Status
This is research, not a shipped feature. Whether and how it lands in the pool will be written up in the roadmap and the parameters page.
Next note
Lookups that leave no trace