Fresh addresses protect privacy, but they require interaction: the receiver has to hand out a new address each time. That is awkward for donations or a public payment code. Silent Payments (BIP352) solves this.
How it works
- The receiver publishes one static silent payment address.
- The sender's wallet combines that address with the public keys of the coins it spends (elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman) and derives a unique taproot output.
- The receiver finds the payment by doing the same calculation with their private key while scanning new transactions.
What you get
- No interaction between sender and receiver.
- No notification transaction on the chain, unlike earlier schemes.
- Each payment goes to a unique address, so address reuse is avoided.
- On-chain, a silent payment looks like an ordinary taproot payment.
- Labels let the receiver tell which published code a payment came through.
The trade-off
The receiver's wallet must scan the blockchain. BIP352 says this is generally feasible for full nodes but a challenge for light wallets; light-client support is still an open area. The BIP also advises against using it inside coinjoins for now, because there is no formal security proof for that case.
Status: BIP352 is marked "Complete". Wallet support is growing but not yet universal.