Bitcoin Forum

A few days ago, someone asked me to send them a paynym address. They mentioned that you can create one in such wallets such as Samourai and Sparrow Wallet. But two things are unclear to me:

Since this is not an address type, what exactly is it?
And how exactly can I generate one with any wallet?

This is what I got from Internet.


https://paynym.is/ - This is public directory of BIP-47 Payment codes.
Address format is like this:


Steps to generate a Paynym address:
- Install Samourai Wallet
- Claim Your PayNym
https://paynym.is/static/public/images/step1.png
- Meet your new PayNym Bot
https://paynym.is/static/public/images/step2.jpg

Source: https://paynym.is/claim

...oh, BIP47.

What exactly are the the advantages or use cases of paynyms over regular addresses, because from my observation, this code is 5x as long as a regular address(?) Something to do with Coinjoin?

I guess none, because it provides anonymity which is what Bitcoin's regular address does.

Just for convenience purposes and it prevents address reuse.
Once linked, you can easily select the user's PayNym to send to his unused address without requesting for new ones.

BTW, that's the behavior in Sparrow, IDK how it is in other clients.

I don't see any option for paynyms in Sparrow Wallet server. Is it only in the desktop client?

I guess I'll have to set up a temp Samourai wallet just to generate a paynym, the way things are going.

I like the idea behind PayNyms but for some reason they never got very popular with Bitcoin community.
This is like created identity with random profile image and you can even create contact list, similar like in messenger apps.
I think it's good way to transact coins privately and using Sparrow wallet you can mix this with coinjoin when you pay with paynym.
Check out more about PayNyms in Sparrow wallet on this page:
https://sparrowwallet.com/docs/spending-privately.html#paying-to-paynym

then better use this ln-bot on telegram...  :)

I still don't understand much, but perhaps I'm just exhausted at the moment. Is it like a master public key that isn't public and doesn't dox user's addresses?

It's in the desktop client, and you use it to coinjoin.

I've also seen these robot avatars in Robosats, but that gives you a shorter in length token instead.

How exactly is this going to help my use-case? I'm in a DM and not a group chat, and I'm not actively trying to receive transactions with that paynym at the moment, only giving it to the other guy.

I'm not using the wallet server but in the desktop client, the feature in under "Tools" and only available if the wallet isn't watching-only.

If there are too many standards, we need one more which would be better than others…
Have you heard about Paystring? https://paystring.org/
One more idea which requires extra effort to use it and which claims to solve problems I have never thought about. But maybe someone will find it useful.

You're thinking about this, right? ;D

https://i.postimg.cc/Y23yRkRt/standards.png

I haven't; to be honest, I also never felt the need to look more into PayNym either. But often times when I use Sparrow to spend BTC, I get tempted to try the 'collaborative 2-person-CoinJoin' feature (link (https://sparrowwallet.com/docs/spending-privately.html#collaborative-two-person-coinjoin)) for better privacy. This requires a PayNym and I think for being able to quickly find a mix partner and join transactions easily, it seems pretty useful. As long as it has no obvious drawbacks of course (like privacy issues or something.. I know CoinJoin is supposed to improve privacy, but you never know in this space.. looking at you, Wasabi).

Need to look into it more before trying it out, for sure.

This topic is old, but if I wrote it again, I would use the same title, so I 'll ask here.

1. if I create a wallet in Sparrow and then enter the same words in Samourai, will it produce the same Paynym? My question could also be "are paynyms produced by the same entropy that produces the seed phrase?"

2. if I get your paynym, let's say "orangeButterfly21" and I send you some sats using Sparrow, won't the system provide me with the txid ? So, won't I be able to view the address where I sent the sats ? I 'd like to test it, but if anyone knows, let me know and I will believe you.

3. if (2) is true and I can see the address, then the only purpose of paynyms is to make sure there is no address reuse? Because every modern wallet with coin control can do that by default.

Yes to both.

Yes. The transaction will obviously still be mined and therefore publicly viewable, just as any other transaction is. As the sender, you will know the address you are sending to.

It ensures no address reuse, but it also means the receiver does not need to generate a new address for every transaction they want to receive and there is no difficulty in communicating that address privately. I could post a paynym publicly, and everyone who wants can use that paynym to send me coins to a fresh address each time, and no one can use that paynym to spy on the addresses it creates for anyone else.

Paynyms also serve another purpose in Samourai and Sparrow wallets in that they allow you to coordinate with other users to create StonewallX2 and Stowaway transactions for improved privacy.

How can those two be both true?

Let's suppose that I am "drunkDog456" and you are "crazyLobster38". Feels fun already.

Then if I send you 200k sats I will know your address after the TX is made.

Then if I send you 100k sats again, it will be certain that the address will not be the same as before, but I will know the address again after the TX is made.

Instead of asking your paynym, I could ask for 2 addresses and you could make sure it's not the same one. Correct?

You will know all the addresses which my paynym generates for you. You will be unable to deduce any of the addresses which my paynym generates for other people. If 100 different people all send me 10 transactions using my paynyn, you will only know the address for the 10 transactions you made, and you won't know anything about the other 990 transactions (or indeed, if there have been any other transactions at all).

Yes, but that requires me to be online, generate a new address, communicate it with you securely, etc. With a paynym, you can just generate a new address for me on the fly without any interaction needed from me at all.

Ok, seems like I got my daily knowledge. Here is my Paynym "+dampsun8A6". I will share it with multiple people now that I learnt about it.

BIP47 Paynyms aren't popular because of the notification transactions/trusted third parties involved, undermining the attempt to accept donations privately.  Silent Payments (BIP352) is the proper standard for stealth addresses that doesn't have these downsides: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/1458

Does anyone know which wallets have Silent Payments/BIP-352 already implemented in their UI, or which wallets have it in development?

I believe it could be such a useful tool for groups of people that require more privacy and anonymity just like the Truckers' Protest, to avoid govenment sanctions. Bitcoin would have been the best use case for what they needed because the banks/donations sites disallowed them service.

Although some people considered it a failure, it would have been a success if Silent Payments + layering that with Lightning, and CoinJoin were used?

 🤔

Silent Payments support is being developed for Bitcoin Core, it's on the wishlist: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/28599

Here is the tracking issue: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/28536

And as you can expect, that made Samourai extremely pissed since people will actually gain full privacy from their stealth addresses with BIP352 Silent Payments instead of having users' donation info stored and tracked by their BIP47 Paynym server: https://twitter.com/SamouraiWallet/status/1666404283208572933

Hopefully the Core Developers hurry it up and have it merged as soon as possible.

I have a hypothetical question for you. If BIP-352/Silent Payments was implemented, and the Trucker's Protest used it to receive donations, then decided to send those outputs to Wasabi CoinJoin for further anonymity, would the blockchain analysis companies working with Wasabi have the ability to detect them, or would BIP-352 actually be good enough to protect users' privacy?

If a a blockchain analysis company was previously targeting a static donation address, a BIP352 silent payment address would stop them from being able to determine which coinjoin inputs were donations. This does not guarantee donations are not sourced from already blacklisted entities.

There are none.

Absolutely. But BIP47 or hosting a payment server that generated a new address for each deposit would have achieved the same result.

No one knows. Wasabi will block whatever their government buddies tell them to block, and they won't give any reason for doing so. No point in risking it when you can just use JoinMarket or Whirlpool instead.

OK guys, I know silent payments and BIP352 are nice and all, but this question (and also the one asked a few days ago) have already been answered, so I'm locking this thread before it turns into another Wasabi and Samourai battleground. You can start another topic to continue the discussion if you guys want to. Thanks!