What is a relayer?

A relayer submits a transaction to the blockchain on someone else’s behalf and pays its network fee. Privacy tools use relayers so that a private action doesn’t have to come from, or be paid for by, the user’s own wallet.

Why privacy tools need one

If you paid the fee for a private action from your own wallet, the payment would tie that wallet to the action. A relayer signs and pays instead. In Redacted your wallet signs once, when you open Private Mode, and after that your browser proves each action and a relayer carries it on-chain.

What Redacted’s relayer can and can’t do

Think of it as a courier service for envelopes it cannot open.

  • It checks each action in a simulation, signs the outer transaction with its own account, pays the network fee and tracks the result.
  • Your proof fixes the operation, the amounts, the destination, the fee, which relayer may submit it and an expiry, so the relayer can’t change any of them.
  • It never sees a key, a note or a choice. It can deliver your sealed action or decline to, and that is the full extent of its power.
  • It reads what it needs straight from the chain and keeps only in-memory caches, so if it vanished, your funds would stay where they are.

Status

Today one relayer carries the actions. With the node network, relaying moves to independent, bonded relayer nodes picked at random for each action, and if no node is live for 7 days, an emergency exit lets you submit your own withdrawal.

The relayer →

Related terms

Node networkRedacted’s node network is a group of independent, bonded operators who carry private actions on-chain and approve every deposit, each choosing what it checks before it approves. No single node can send a deposit back or pause deposits alone.Zero-knowledge proofA zero-knowledge proof lets someone prove that a statement is true without revealing anything else, for example that they own funds and may spend them, without showing which funds or who they are.Private ModePrivate Mode is the private side of Redacted. You open it with one wallet signature that creates your private keys in your browser, and after that zero-knowledge proofs authorize every action, so your wallet has nothing more to sign.Emergency exitThe emergency exit opens by itself if no active Redacted node carries an action or sends a heartbeat for 7 days. Anyone can then withdraw from the Reserve, or close positions and move funds out of Spending, by submitting the action from their own wallet.

Updated October 7, 2026. All terms