Zcash address types: what a swap can pay out to

A Zcash wallet can show you three or four different addresses for the same balance, and they start with different letters. Which one you paste into a swap form decides whether the payout can be made at all and what will be visible on the block explorer afterwards. This guide goes through every prefix you will meet, says which two the form on sablebolt.io accepts, explains why a swap payout is a transparent output, and shows what to do in your wallet after it arrives. The address facts were checked on 12 October 2026 against the Zcash documentation at zcash.readthedocs.io ("Addresses and Value Pools in Zcash"), ZIP 316 at zips.z.cash (unified addresses) and the z.cash learn pages.

The prefixes at a glance

The form's guidance for a Zcash recipient reads: t1… (transparent) or u1… (unified); legacy z-addresses are not accepted. "Legacy z-addresses" means the zc… and zs… strings.

Transparent addresses: t1 and t3

The Zcash documentation puts it in one sentence: transparent addresses and the values sent to or from them are publicly visible. A t1 address is a single-signature address, 35 characters long, built the same way as a Bitcoin address with a different prefix. A t3 address is the multisignature variant; you will only meet one if a service hands it to you.

A payment to a t1 address is an ordinary transaction output on the Zcash chain. Anyone with the address can open the explorer and see every transaction that touched it, with amounts and timestamps. This is the same model as Bitcoin, and it is the model every explorer, every exchange deposit system and every automated payout system is built for.

Shielded addresses: zc, zs and Orchard

The same documentation says that shielded addresses and the values sent to or from them are not publicly visible, and that transaction fees are visible regardless. There have been three shielded pools:

• Sprout, the original one, with addresses starting zc. The documentation calls these legacy.
• Sapling, activated with the Sapling upgrade, with addresses starting zs.
• Orchard, the newest pool. An Orchard address has no stand-alone string of its own; according to ZIP 316 it is reachable only inside a unified address.

If your wallet offers a zs… address, that is a Sapling address, and the form does not accept it. That is not a judgement about Sapling; it is the consequence of the next section.

Unified addresses: u1

ZIP 316 defines a unified address as a bundle of receivers encoded as one string, with the prefix u and Bech32m encoding — which is why every mainnet unified address starts with u1. One unified address may contain at most one receiver of each type from this list: an Orchard receiver, a Sapling receiver, and a transparent receiver (either P2PKH, the t1 kind, or P2SH, the t3 kind, not both). There is no Sprout receiver type at all. A unified address is therefore longer than a t1 address, and its length depends on how many receivers it carries.

The rule for the sender is the important part. ZIP 316 says the sending wallet must use the receiver of the most preferred type that it supports, in the order Orchard, then Sapling, then transparent. Two consequences:

1. A unified address that contains a transparent receiver can be paid transparently. A wallet that only knows how to send transparent transactions takes the transparent receiver out of the bundle and pays to it; the payment lands as a transparent output on the t1 address inside the u1 string.
2. A unified address with no transparent receiver cannot be paid by a transparent-only sender. Nothing in the bundle is usable; the payment cannot be built.

The z.cash page on unified addresses describes a u1 address as a single address that works across all Zcash pools, transparent and shielded. That is true from the sender's side; which pool actually receives the money is decided by the sender's capabilities.

Why a swap pays out transparently, and what to paste

The form accepts t1 and u1. A swap payout is made by an automated system paying many recipients from a payout address; such systems pay to transparent receivers. So:

• Give a t1 address and the outcome is certain. The payout arrives as a transparent output on that address; the status page shows the payout hash; the explorer shows the amount and your address.
• Give a u1 address and the outcome depends on what is inside it. If your wallet built the unified address with a transparent receiver, the payout goes to that receiver and the result is the same as above. If it did not, the payout cannot be built. The form checks the string's format, not its contents, so it cannot warn you about this. Our recommendation on this route is therefore a t1 address, or a u1 address only when you know your wallet included a transparent receiver in it.
• A zs… or zc… address is rejected by the form before the swap is created, so there is no risk of a payout going astray; there is only the few seconds to copy a different address.

Most wallets show a transparent address under a label like "transparent", "t-address" or "receive transparent". Copy that one.

What the explorer shows for a transparent payout: a worked example

Numbers are made up; the form shows the live ones.

1. You open BTC → ZEC, enter 0.02 BTC, and paste your t1 address. Suppose 1 BTC = 1,500 ZEC and the Zcash payout fee shown is 0.0001 ZEC: 0.02 × 1,500 − 0.0001 = 29.9999 ZEC as the estimate.
2. You send the BTC. Two Bitcoin confirmations take about 21–44 minutes; during that window the rate is not yet set, so the delivered amount will differ from the estimate by the market's move.
3. At "Sending" the status page shows the payout hash with a link to blockchair.com. The page for that hash shows: the time, the block, the confirmation count, an input from the payout address, an output of the delivered amount to your t1 address, and the fee.
4. Zcash blocks are targeted at 75 seconds since the Blossom upgrade (ZIP 208), so the confirmations climb quickly; "Done" follows within a few minutes.
5. Your wallet shows the same amount as a transparent balance.

The record on the explorer is permanent. Anyone who knows your t1 address can see that it received 29.9 ZEC at that minute from that payout address. The explorer does not show who you are, what you sent to get the ZEC, or where the deposit came from; the Bitcoin side is a separate transaction on a separate chain. What a payout hash does and does not reveal is the subject of What a block explorer shows about a swap, and what it doesn't.

Shielding afterwards

A transparent balance can be moved into a shielded pool by your own wallet, in a transaction from your t1 address to one of your own shielded addresses. On the chain that transaction shows the transparent side — the amount leaving your t1 address — and the fee; what happens inside the shielded pool afterwards is not visible. From that point on, payments you make from the shielded balance show only the fee, as the documentation describes.

Whether this happens by itself depends on the wallet. The z.cash page on unified addresses notes that autoshielding of received funds depends on wallet support: some wallets move transparent receipts into the shielded pool automatically, others have a "shield funds" button, and some keep transparent and shielded balances strictly apart. Check your wallet's documentation; the swap has no part in this step.

Sending ZEC: the deposit side

On ZEC → USDT ERC-20 you are the one sending. The status page shows a Zcash deposit address and the exact amount; send it from your wallet in one transaction. The swap starts after 6 Zcash confirmations, about 9–19 minutes, and then waits for the Ethereum payout to confirm.

If your ZEC is in a shielded balance and the deposit address is transparent, your wallet builds a shielded-to-transparent transaction. The chain then shows the amount arriving at the deposit address — the transparent side is always public — but not which shielded address it left. Make sure the full amount shown on the status page arrives; a wallet that deducts the fee from the amount entered will deliver slightly less than the figure the swap expects.

Checklist before you paste a Zcash address

• The address starts with t1 (certain) or u1 (only if you know it carries a transparent receiver).
• It does not start with zs or zc; the form rejects those.
• You know which balance in your wallet the payout will land in — the transparent one.
• You have decided what to do with it afterwards: shield it in the wallet, send it on, or keep it.
• For ZEC out: the amount arriving at the deposit address is exactly the figure on the status page, after your wallet's fee.
• Status link saved.

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