As I understand it, when we shield, the crypto in a sense goes in to one large pool. And when we unshield the process is reversed.
Now imagine, an unlikely situation. We are the ONLY person on the system, and we shielded a coin, then we unshielded it, would it be like we were never shielded it at all because we were in a pool of only one ? Now, of course we are not the only one, but from this can I deduce that the more shields done, and in particular the accumulated shields done over a longer time, will INCREASE the privacy ? meaning the original coins are being mixed in an ever increasing pool size and mixture? Does it benefit me, if I have no other immediate need for the coins, to leave them in Incognito for a longer period of time ?
Increased Privacy with time
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By my understanding, yes you are correct. If you were the only one to shield, you would get the same coins back.
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Is any way to determine how long the funds should reside in the shielded blockchain to ensure sufficient anonymity? Is 24 h generally sufficient?
If your shielding a well established coin, that would be fine. But keep in mind if you move the same amount in and out, you could probably still be tracked based on your transaction amounts.
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I’m referring primarily to transactions with XMR and ZEC. For example, I transfer XMR several times to different shielded addresses within Incognito before unshielding the balance. Normally, no traitorous information should jeopardize the anonymity of the transactions, given that the same amount is being transferred each time.
So the real bottleneck here is that no one can say or estimate exactly how long the delay between two transfer actions within the Incognito chain should be in order to significantly increase anonymity. This is exactly the issue that I still have to address.
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