Coinage

Introduction

Coinage is the Polkadot App's peer-to-peer payment feature. From a user perspective, it is a way to send and receive funds App-to-App with the privacy and personhood properties of the underlying pallet-coinage primitive. From a Product developer perspective, Coinage is one of two payment surfaces a Product can route through:

Coinage: Personhood-gated, peer-to-peer payments where the App is the originating UI on both sides.
Standard Balances transfer surface: General transfers and merchant-style flows.

Conceptual Model

Three properties differentiate Coinage from a plain Balances.transfer_keep_alive:

Personhood-aware: Coinage payments can be gated on PoP, sending to "any real person on the network" rather than to a specific account address. The recipient's address need not be known to the sender.
Privacy-preserving by default: Coinage routes through the alias and Ring-VRF surface where appropriate, so the on-chain trail does not link the sender's account to the recipient's account in the same way a public transfer does.
App-native UX: The send and receive flows are rendered in the Polkadot App on both sides, with the user approving the transaction on their phone.

For the pallet-level storage model, privacy primitives, and dispatch surface, see the pallet-coinage reference.

Where to Go Next

Proof of Personhood

The personhood surface Coinage gates on, including Ring-VRF aliases and the Full and Lite tier model.

→ Reference