Tornado uses fixed note sizes, but can combine them: ETH deposits can be multiples of 0.01 ETH, such as 0.45 ETH. A leftover smaller than 0.01 ETH — e.g. 0.007 ETH — cannot be shielded into Tornado as-is. Moving that dust carelessly can link addresses. The newer small-denomination pools may have much smaller anonymity sets than classic pools.
# What not to do
- Do not sweep dust from many fresh addresses into one “dust jar” address if those addresses were meant to stay unrelated — that consolidation is a public link.
- Do not burn privacy just to clean up tiny leftovers.
# Practical approach
- Prefer receiving amounts that already fit note sizes when you can influence the send.
- Shield every full note you can; leave dust parked on its original fresh address if it is tiny and inactive.
- When dust from related activity (same receive story) adds up toward a full note, shield that note.
- When you need to accumulate unrelated dust toward a full Tornado note without linking the source addresses on the public chain, use Privacy Pools as a temporary holding pool (any amount at or above the pool minimum) — then exit into a Tornado-sized shield when you have enough. (For an asset with no Privacy Pools / Tornado pool, Railgun can shield arbitrary ERC-20s.)
kohaku shield --protocol privacy-pools --amount-formatted 0.03 --broadcast
# …repeat from other dust sources over time…
# while funds sit in both places, check both:
kohaku balances --include tornado,privacy-pools
# later: unshield from Privacy Pools to a fresh address, then shield into Tornado
kohaku unshield --protocol privacy-pools --next --amount-max --broadcast