The magic property
Every ender chest in the world opens onto the same private 27 slots — per player, not per chest. Deposit diamonds at your base, break the chest (it drops as an item without spilling contents), and reopen another ender chest thousands of blocks away: the diamonds are there. Other players cannot see your slots even if they open the same chest.
Getting and placing
The recipe: 8 obsidian around an Eye of Ender. Mining a placed ender chest needs a Silk Touch pickaxe — without it, the chest breaks into 8 obsidian and 1 eye... practically: it drops obsidian, and the contents are never lost (they live in the ender dimension), but you rebuild the chest. Place ender chests at your base, your nether hub, your mining outpost and inside your ender chest-carrying boat loops.
The logistics loop
The classic pattern: mine with shulker-box-free inventory discipline, deposit valuables into the ender chest when full, keep mining, and empty the chest at base. On servers it doubles as a secure transfer system between players (meet at any ender chest, swap contents). It is the single best endgame quality-of-life block after the shulker box.
