Silent payments

[fillippone]

Bitbox02 added support for Silent payments:



According to th above post, Bitbox02 can now send Silent Payments.

They also have a blog post about Silent Payments:

Reusable payment codes: Exchanging bitcoin addresses privately

[joker_josue]

Imagine that I want to send it to myself using this type of payment. Can I do this now?

That's only useful for testing. On-chain, it's just a normal transaction. Any data you're hiding is known to both sender (you) and receiver (you) already

But then it’s not possible to divert attention, to those who analyze the blockchain?

[NotATether]

That being said, I expect silent payments to get massively adopted, fast.

But, is it possible to make silent payments at this time?

Imagine that I want to send it to myself using this type of payment. Can I do this now?

Technically, yes!

First of all, you and the receiver need to be using a wallet that supports silent payments (like the Bitbox02 above or any of the software wallets that dkbit98 lists in his thread).

Then after that, it's just like sending a regular payment between each other. The blockchain handles creating and receiving transactions, so all you have to do is create a silent payment for an amount and let your wallet handle the rest.

[LoyceV]

But then it’s not possible to divert attention, to those who analyze the blockchain?

That's the beauty of silent payments: it doesn't need any changes in the Bitoin protocol. Everything stays the same, except for getting a new option to increase privacy in certain cases.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Hey witcher_sense, I am coming back to you for announcing you that a German translation is now also available for your topic. Thanks to cygan, you can add this translation to OP: Silent payments (Stille Zahlungen).

I don't want to talk in his name but, so far, when he made translations for AOBT, he made them in German and Polish as well so, perhaps, a Polish translation will follow too

Cheers!

[dansus021]

Indonesia translations is done - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5501175.msg64385094#msg64385094 

[GazetaBitcoin]

Indonesia translations is done

I'd like to make a mention to witcher_sense regarding this translation, as it may bring some questions... As you see the translation is a post made inside a topic and not a standalone topic... This happened because, by pure chance, inside Indonesian board there was already a thread regarding silent payments - Silent Payment Bitcoin (this was a pure coincidence). We discussed inside AOBT thread if an Indonesian translation should be done, considering that a related topic already exists and we reached the conclusion that it won't hurt to have this translation as well.

This is the reason for which the translation was made as a post inside the existing thread and not a standalone topic.

[witcher_sense]

Thank you, added both transtations to the OP.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Hey witcher_sense, I have more good news for you

A tenth translation for your topic is available. It was made for Turkish local board, by mela65: Silent Payments- Sessiz Ödemeler. Would you like to add it to OP too, please?

Also, since this is the tenth translation for this topic, we consider it as being finished (we consider a topic as having enough translations once it has at least 10). However, this does not mean that your topic will not receive more translations. If other AOBTers are willing, they may do even more translations. If this will happen I will let you know.

Meanwhile, I congratulate you again for this interesting topic!

[GazetaBitcoin]

I come back with an information provided by Razvan_BTC inside the Romanian translation of this topic. Based on his statement, Cake Wallet implemented silent payments.

I considered to share this observation here, in case some would be interested to try this feature on Cake Wallet.

[danda]

disclaimer: I'm just learning about silent payments today, from this thread.  So my understanding is incomplete.

I read some comments indicating that with silent payments, only one recipient address would be needed, for privacy purposes.  And we could get rid of key derivation, gap-limit, etc.

I don't think that is adequate for all situations.

case in point:  Monero started with a single address and added stealth addresses which ensured unique addresses visible on the blockchain, much like silent payments.

Over time it became apparent this was insufficient and they eventually added sub-addresses so that the recipient could give out a unique address per tx.

why?

Let's say Alice has ETH and is buying BTC with some kind of "anon" exchange, like shapeshift.io was originally.  She does this once a month for 5 months.

Each time she provides the exchange her single, unique BTC address.   The exchange uses silent payments and on the blockchain a unique address is seen for each tx.

However the exchange can easily correlate that these 5 tx, spread over 5 months, all used the same address and thus went to the same recipient.

So privacy is increased on the blockchain, but not between sender and receiver.

The exchange is now able to sell this correlated data to blockchain analytics companies, etc, who can perform further correlations between exchanges, perhaps with KYC data, and now Alice's privacy is completely gone.

By contrast, if Alice provides a unique address to the exchange each time, there is no way to correlate those, and no privacy problem.

[fillippone]

I considered to share this observation here, in case some would be interested to try this feature on Cake Wallet.

Yes, Cake Wallet is one of the wallets providing this with the most complete functionalities.
I must admit, I found little documentation on the website.
If it helps, the complete list of wallets can be found here:

Silent Payments Wallet Support

[LoyceV]

However the exchange can easily correlate that these 5 tx, spread over 5 months, all used the same address and thus went to the same recipient.
~
By contrast, if Alice provides a unique address to the exchange each time, there is no way to correlate those, and no privacy problem.

Silent payments only improve privacy in cases where you would have used the same address publicly already (like a donation address on a website). In any other case address reuse has always been bad for privacy.

[fillippone]

Silent payments only improve privacy in cases where you would have used the same address publicly already (like a donation address on a website).

Signature Campaigns are a perfect use case for silent payments: the same address is used over multiple weeks, which can be very damaging to privacy.
I think any prominent campaign manager like @icopress or @hhampuz should consider it as a feature to implement in their management suites.

[LoyceV]

I think any prominent campaign manager like @icopress or @hhampuz should consider it as a feature to implement in their management suites.

That will only work if a mainstream wallet (like Electrum) supports it, including "send to many":

Code:

addressA,amountA
addressB,amountB
addressC,amountC

And public spreadsheets shouldn't exist anymore either. No more spreadsheets is great for privacy but bad for transparency.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I think any prominent campaign manager like @icopress or @hhampuz should consider it as a feature to implement in their management suites.

I agree, but more wallet software need to support it, and maintain it. And when I say more, I mean Electrum and Sparrow.

And public spreadsheets shouldn't exist anymore either. That's great for privacy but bad for transparency.

There wouldn't be a problem with public spreadsheets if the payments are silent. Who earns what is already public information, what's sensitive is where this money sits on.

[fillippone]

There wouldn't be a problem with public spreadsheets if the payments are silent. Who earns what is already public information, what's sensitive is where this money sits on.

For the dollar denominated campaign (now the majority) some uncertainty in the conversion rate would hinder any very simple search based on the onchain transaction.
Maybe also a tendon number certain number of “fake recipients would also break the heuristic of: “1 to 33 Monday evening payment”.

[apogio]

And public spreadsheets shouldn't exist anymore either. That's great for privacy but bad for transparency.

I doubt public spreadsheets are good for privacy. I don’t think anyone should see that user A receives X satoshi in the address Z.

In fact I would claim the opposite, that they are bad for privacy but good for transparency! But the address could be hidden. And that would be transparent too. It’s just not verifiable. Well, even if the address is known, it’s still not verifiable cryptographically, but it’s certainly more convincing than saying “hey, I just sent fillippone 1m satoshi”

[LoyceV]

And public spreadsheets shouldn't exist anymore either. That's No more spreadsheets is great for privacy but bad for transparency.

I doubt public spreadsheets are good for privacy.

I've fixed my quote, you could indeed read it the opposite way.

In fact I would claim the opposite, that they are bad for privacy but good for transparency!

We agree

[Pmalek]

I come back with an information provided by Razvan_BTC inside the Romanian translation of this topic. Based on his statement, Cake Wallet implemented silent payments.

I considered to share this observation here, in case some would be interested to try this feature on Cake Wallet.

Cake Wallet was one of the first wallets to support silent payments. Cake Wallet and Silentium were the first two software in the table on https://silentpayments.xyz/docs/wallets/. Also, Cake Wallet's GitHub mentioned silent payments in version 4.18 as early as May. This list from dkbit98 has a few more software and hardware wallets that support silent payments.