# Private Balances ### Overview RAILGUN private (shielded) balances are built through a registry of [UTXOs](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utxo.asp) (unspent transaction outputs), similar to Bitcoin. The primary difference is that the RAILGUN UTXO list is encrypted with the sender and receiver’s keys, meaning that no outsider can view the contents of the UTXO. The entire list of RAILGUN UTXOs makes up a [merkle tree data structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree), which is a structured list of hashes which is used to validate the balance state during transactions. While generating the most up-to-date merkle tree, each commitment leaf (which represent a transaction) must be synced and decrypted in order to build a RAILGUN wallet’s private balance. This syncing process can take a few minutes. Once the sync is complete, UTXO token balances are aggregated into a user’s balance. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.railgun.org/developer-guide/wallet/private-balances.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.