Including the ones with uncomfortable answers.
It breaks one specific link: the one between the wallet that deposits and the wallet that withdraws. Everything else about your coins stays as public as it ever was. If you deposit from an exchange account in your own name and withdraw to a wallet you then use to buy something in your own name, the mixer has done its job and you have undone it.
Pick an amount, send exactly that amount to the address shown, and keep the note your browser generates. Later, paste the note, name a destination, and take the same amount out. Four steps, no account.
Two random numbers your browser invents and never sends anywhere. They are the only thing that can withdraw your deposit. There is no reset, no support ticket and no operator override — lose them and the SOL stays in the pool forever.
Around 0.001 SOL per note, near enough ten cents, and about 97% of that is a permanent on-chain record that stops the note being spent twice. There is no percentage cut. Because the cost is flat, it is proportionally trivial on a large denomination and noticeable on a small one.
Longer than feels necessary. Deposit and withdraw within the same few minutes and the timing pairs the two transactions without anyone needing to break any cryptography. Waiting also lets more deposits land behind yours, which is the thing actually hiding you.
Because a unique amount is a name tag. Pools accept one exact figure so that every deposit in them is interchangeable. A pool where amounts vary is a pool where the amounts do the identifying.
Not to withdraw. A relayer submits the transaction and takes its fee from the withdrawal, so the destination address never needs to hold SOL first — which matters, because funding it from your old wallet would rebuild the link you just paid to break.
Not from the proof — it reveals nothing about which deposit it corresponds to. The real exposure is a thin pool: if the operator placed most of the deposits themselves, they can recognise their own and identify yours by elimination. That number is printed on the pool picker rather than hidden.
Privacy is not a crime in most jurisdictions, and wanting your salary or your holdings off a public ledger is an ordinary motive. You remain responsible for the law where you live. A tool cannot make an illegal transaction legal.
An address with no history and no future connection to you. Withdrawing straight into a KYC exchange deposit address hands the link back intact and wastes the exercise.
Next: the walkthrough, the mechanism, or the costs.