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The Privacy Problem Bitcoin Never Solved

When Satoshi wrote the Bitcoin whitepaper, Section 10 was dedicated to privacy. The solution? Use a different address for every transaction. This worked… until on-chain sleuths arrived.

The Good

Low mental overhead - One master secret recovers all your funds

The Bad

Traceable payments - Anyone can link your transactions together
The real problem: If Alice sends Bitcoin to Bob, then uses the change to pay Charles, both Bob and Charles can track where the money went next.

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Previous Solutions (And Why They Failed)

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BIP 47: Payment Codes

Used by Samourai Wallet (#FREESAMOURAI), this approach required a notification transaction before sending funds.
Two fatal flaws:
  1. Double fees - You pay for notification + actual payment
  2. Broken privacy - The notification itself reveals you’re about to receive Bitcoin

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What We Actually Need

1

No extra fees

One transaction should be enough
2

Zero privacy leaks

No notification transactions or on-chain signals
3

Static addresses

Share one address, receive unlimited private payments
Silent Payments delivers all three.

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How Silent Payments Work

Math notation:
  • Lowercase (a, b, p) = private keys
  • Uppercase (A, B, P) = public keys
  • G = generator point on secp256k1 curve
  • · = scalar multiplication

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The Magic Formula

Alice publishes: Public key A
Bob computes: A + hash(b · A) · G = P (destination address)
Alice scans: A + hash(a · B) · G = P ✓Where b is Bob’s UTXO private key.
Thanks to ECDH, both compute the same shared secret:b · A == a · BSo they both derive the same address P, but only Alice can spend from it.

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The Result

One Address

Share a static silent payment address forever

Zero Extra Fees

Same cost as a regular Bitcoin transaction

Perfect Privacy

Charles has no idea Alice received Bitcoin from Bob

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Ready to Integrate?

Start Building with Silent Payments

Follow our integration guide to implement Bitcoin privacy in your app

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Learn More

BIP-352 Standard

Read the official Bitcoin Improvement Proposal

Silent Payments Explained

Deep dive into the protocol mechanics