Evolution of Bitcoin Privacy: From Stealth Addresses to Silent Payments

Silent Payments is a new approach to improving privacy and useability of Bitcoin. Imagine not needing to manually create new addresses? Josibake and Ruben Somsen join me to discuss some of the ins and outs of Silent Payments. We discuss:

• Silent Payments overview

• Contrast with other techniques such as BIP47 

• Light client support

• Stopping address re use

• Base layer privacy discussion

Links:

• X: @josibake

• X: @SomsenRuben

• BIP: Silent Payments

• Tracking progress in Bitcoin Core/libsecp256k1

• Informational website from sethforprivacy : Privacy-preserving static addresses for Bitcoin

Sponsors:

• Swan.com (code LIVERA)

• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)

• Mempool.space

Stephan Livera links:

• Follow me on X: @stephanlivera

• Subscribe to the podcast

• Subscribe to Substack

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro

(01:01) - Overview of Silent Payments (SP)

(03:15) - History of the SP idea & contrast with other methods

Add more

(14:36) - Current status of SP development & adoption

(17:49) - Testing light clients for SP

(21:50) - The Silent Payment Experience

(26:31) - Light client support

(31:20) - What is a light client?

(38:05) - Sponsors

(41:16) - Spend Key & Scan Key 

(42:37) - XPUB vs. Silent Payments

(44:42) - Reducing address re-use with SP

(49:29) - Labeling with Silent Payments

(53:14) - Ease of use and compatibility with Lightning 

(57:03) - Overcoming the ‘silver bullet’ mindset

(01:10:50) - Composability with Silent Payments

(01:12:46) - Silent Payments summary

(01:14:06) - Closing Thoughts