node-07 · pool: orchard · status: pre-mint

Shielded by default.

5,000 shield-pets that keep part of themselves in noise. The rarest 3% never resolve at all.

check eligibilityhow it works

5,000 supply · free mint · no public sale · Zcash ZSA

[lore]

Shieldlings

[001]

Born in the Orchard pool

Shieldlings do not arrive on a ledger. They condense out of the Orchard pool, where every note looks like every other note, and a small shield-shaped thing occasionally refuses to dissolve back in.

[002]

Part of them is always noise

Each one carries a Shield %. It is not a rarity score. It is how much of the body has been dithered into ordered noise and genuinely cannot be read. A Shieldling at 0% is fully exposed. Most are somewhere in between, and they prefer it that way.

[003]

The fully shielded

136 of them sit at 100%. A silhouette, a scrambled face, nothing legible underneath. They are the only ones that never had to choose what to reveal, and the others regard them with something close to envy.

[004]

They know who was early

Shieldlings will not be sold. They go to the wallets that were already holding blue-chip collections on Zcash when the snapshot was taken, because those are the only addresses a Shieldling will resolve for.

[protocol]

How it works

  1. 01

    Hold an eligible collection at snapshot

    One qualifying blue-chip NFT on Zcash puts your address on the list. Holding more does not increase your allocation. The snapshot block is published here before it is taken.

  2. 02

    Submit your unified address

    Enter a u1 unified address plus proof of holding. Zcash has no EVM wallet to connect, so eligibility is an address and an off-chain proof, never a signature popup. Your raw address is never published: the allowlist on this site stores only SHA-256 hashes.

  3. 03

    Receive your Shieldling as a ZSA

    Issuance runs on the ZSA testnet first, then migrates to your shielded address once ZSA reaches mainnet. Each Shieldling is one IssueAction, supply 1, finalized, with the SHA-256 of its metadata committed as the asset description hash.

on timing

ZSA mainnet timing is not ours to set. It depends on Zcash network upgrades, and the NU7 upgrade scheduled for 5 November 2026 does not include ZSA. We will not announce a mint date that depends on someone else's roadmap. Testnet issuance comes first, and this page will say so when it happens.

[access]

Check my status

checked entirely in your browser. the address is hashed locally and compared against published hashes. nothing is sent anywhere, and we never ask for a key.

eligible collections

ZecBitZecPunksZecFrogsZecCatzkSNARKsZADDRCypherSquadBitfootsZecutives

holding one is enough. holding several does not increase your allocation.

[proof]

Provenance

Every Shieldling was drawn by a deterministic generator from a fixed seed. The generator hash and the manifest hash below were published before any issuance. Re-run the generator with the same seed and you get the same 5,000 images, byte for byte, which means nobody can quietly swap art after the fact.

manifest sha256
reading...
generator sha256
reading...
seed
reading...
grid
reading...
sealed until reveal

The manifest itself stays sealed until reveal, because publishing it now would hand over every token's traits and rarity before anyone has minted. Its hash is committed above, so when the file does go up you can check it against the number you are reading today. A hash published after the fact proves nothing, which is why this one is published first.

how to verify
$ sha256sum manifest.json
$ python generate.py --supply 5000 --out rebuild
$ diff <(jq -S . manifest.json) <(jq -S . rebuild/manifest.json)

same seed, same generator, same 5,000 images. if the diff is empty, the art you are looking at is the art that was committed to.

the set, unshielding
[faq]

Questions

>Is this really a free mint?

Yes. There is no public sale, no presale and no allowlist to buy into. The only cost is the network fee to receive the asset. If you see anyone selling a Shieldlings mint spot, it is not us.

>What wallet do I need?

A Zcash wallet that supports unified addresses, meaning an address that starts with u1. Zcash is not an EVM chain, so there is nothing to connect here and no browser extension involved. You paste an address, we never ask for a key.

>When is the mint?

Unscheduled, deliberately. Issuance needs ZSA, ZSA is not on Zcash mainnet yet, and NU7 in November does not bring it. We would rather say nothing than name a date we do not control. Testnet issuance will be announced here first.

>What is the Shield %?

The share of a Shieldling's body that has been dithered into ordered noise by the generator. 1,651 sit at 0% and are fully legible. 136 sit at 100% and are pure silhouette. It is a visual trait, not a rarity multiplier, though the extremes are scarce on their own.

>Are there royalties?

No enforced royalty. ZSAs do not carry an on-chain royalty mechanism, and we are not going to pretend otherwise by writing one into a marketplace agreement we cannot police.

>Is ownership actually private?

On Zcash, yes, by default. The collection, its supply and its provenance are public and verifiable right here. Who holds which Shieldling is shielded unless the holder chooses to disclose it, which is the entire point of putting them on this chain.