Bitcoin Forum

today the 4.5.5 version of Electrum has been released
as in the previous versions, there are numerous new features as well as bug fixes.
unfortunately i still miss the support of silent payments... however, you can read the complete changelog under the following link: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/RELEASE-NOTES (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/RELEASE-NOTES)

download link: https://electrum.org/#download (https://electrum.org/#download)

[Guide] Verify and download Electrum wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0)
The paranoid user's security guide for using Electrum safely. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5456886.0)

Two topics that can help newbies to learn and practice important steps when they use Electrum wallet. If cygan can add it to OP, I think it will be helpful for newbies who find this thread by chance and don't know about two given threads.

This requires TapRoot to be implemented first so you might not see 'Silent Payment' related updates in the next release or until TapRoot support is implemented.
But Electrum is slowly getting there since some of the necessary TapRoot-related code are already implemented, just not being used yet.

For Silent Payment specifically, there's only this one Feature Request: [ Feature Request ] Implement BIP352 sending (http://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/8847)

Typo here.

To add taproot support, what do they need? Is Taproot so difficult to implement?

I'd be surprised if Electrum added support for output descriptors, in fact, support for descriptors would make it much easier to restore/create wallets the way the user wants.

Would support for descriptors be one of the requirements for P2TR addresses to be added to Electrum?

Depends on the number of developers working on it, but it's not as simple as adding another address type since it uses a different signature scheme than the older script types.
Based from the commits list, there are only 2 to 3 active Electrum core developers with a few PRs from contributors.

If it's just sending to TapRoot and creation of imported (non-HD) watch-only wallet containing TapRoot addresses, then it's already implemented.

The core developers aren't fond of discussing about its progress here: github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/7544 (http://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/7544)
But if you check Electrum's milestones backlog (link (https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/milestone/12)), you can see that they're going after output descriptors.
First part towards that goal is already merged: output script descriptors, part 1: change API of transaction.py #8230 (http://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/pull/8230)

I wouldn't expect silent payments to be added any time soon in Electrum wallet, and I noticed other wallets reported some issues with scanning and showing correct balance with using them.
This is still in early beta stage but I expect Sparrow wallet to add silent payment before Electrum, and Cake wallet already have them with Silentium web wallet.

Thanks to this thread I've learned what Silent payments are, thank you guys.

Aside from that, I'm wondering if we'll ever see a feature or plugin for Coinjoin in Electrum. I know that an Electrum fork for shitcoin includes a mixing function, so I imagine that everything is more or less technically feasible, although I suspect that this is not on the developers' priority list.

This would be a great implementation for privacy, but it would put Electrum and its developers in 'trouble' with the government. If you look at the recent events that has led to the closure of privacy enhancing wallets and tools, and how some of their developers have been arrested and charged, then anything that would make Electrum clearly stand out at as a privacy enhancing wallet isn't something that the developers would want to do.