Silent Payments Update

Date

7 May, 2026

Topics

Speakers

Not Available

Transcript by

Not Available

The current way we do payments in Bitcoin is broken
- Where should I pay you? Please generate an address for me?
- Users like static codes like bank account numbers
- We want to preserve privacy
- Anyone that knows an address of an HD wallet may traverse the history
Silent payment addresses are an "ingredient" of how to derive a dynamic address
Tradeoffs:
- Expensive to scan for
- Look through every transaction and perform an expensive EC multiplication
- Sending side is easier to implement
- Sparrow has implemented sending, receiving is experimental
Works great with BIP353 DNS resolution
- Was not a great idea before to post a static address, now it is
Retroactive privacy loss in the presence of a (relevant) quantum computer
Recipient decides on the use of labels
- Cheaper than generating a new SP address
- Labels are also used for change
- Controversy in libsecp to support many labels or not
  - Currently can support many, many labels
  - Alternative approach would cause linear increase in cost for each additional
- Wallet metadata BIP includes label data to assist in scan
We are on take 4 of the libsecp PR
- PR needs review
- Test vectors are up to date from BIP-352
- No security proof yet (what are extra assumptions)