Avail is opening broader access to ShieldTX, a tool that opens each perpetual futures position on an on-chain exchange through a separate wallet, The Block reported on October 28, 2026. The tool is aimed at copy trading, where bots watch a public wallet and mirror its positions. In a review shared exclusively with The Block ahead of the launch, ShieldTX screened 332,317 wallets over 30 days, then studied seven randomly selected traders from the top 100. The review estimated a median additional execution cost of 63 basis points per trade for those sampled traders. That number comes from the vendor's own analysis, so it is an estimate to weigh rather than an independent measurement of the market.

Why It Matters

A public ledger makes a trader's positions readable by anyone, including software built to follow them. According to The Block, ShieldTX compared price movements during trades that attracted copy-traders with those that did not, accounting for coin, size and volatility, and the 63 basis point median applies to the sampled top traders being copied. A reasonable reading is that the cost shows up as worse fills when followers trade in the same direction at nearly the same time, although the report does not break the figure down further. If that reading holds, on-chain transparency works as a cost that falls on the traders others choose to watch, and it may fall hardest on larger accounts whose moves are worth following.

ShieldTX changes the link between positions and a trader, not the visibility of the positions themselves. Avail's post dated August 14, 2026 describes funding a fresh, shielded wallet for each position to make public-wallet tracking harder. Avail's October 7 technical explanation clarifies that the system does not claim privacy against a colluding sequencer and solver. The Block adds that the positions are still visible on the exchange but are not directly linked onchain to the trader's original wallet. In other words, the market can still see that a position exists. The design aims to make it harder for public observers to connect positions to the original funding wallet and follow a trader across positions.

The design also adds a trust assumption. The Block says ShieldTX holds deposited funds in a vault contract on Arbitrum, so a trader relies on that contract and the service around it, and Avail reports multiple internal audits alongside external security consultants and a full audit in progress, but the report does not provide completed audit results or detailed withdrawal terms. Access is limited too: the report says ShieldTX is targeting wallets trading $500,000 or more and that Avail is opening broader access via an invite-code model. Finally, the report says Avail did not provide a comparison of execution costs before and after. That means 63 basis points is an estimate for the selected top-trader sample, not a market-wide cost or a demonstrated saving from the tool. Traders weighing a service like this can ask where the funds sit, how a withdrawal works, and what evidence shows the cost actually falls.

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