3.12 Silent Payments: One Address, Unique Outputs

A long-standing privacy tension: humans want one easy address to share ('here's my donation address'), but reusing the same address on-chain is a privacy disaster — everyone can see all your incoming payments stacked up.

Silent Payments solves this elegantly. You publish a single static identifier (it starts with 'sp1...'). Every time someone pays you, their wallet uses a bit of math to derive a brand-new, unique address that only you can detect and spend from. Outsiders see unrelated addresses receiving funds; you see them all land in one wallet.

It's the best of both worlds: a permanent, easy-to-share contact ID, plus all the privacy benefits of fresh addresses. Wallets like Cake, BlueWallet, and Sparrow are gradually rolling out support, with broader adoption expected over the next year.