Silent Payments.
Bitcoin's answer to address reuse.

Section 1 · The address-reuse problem

When you reuse a Bitcoin address:

• Everyone who sends to you can see each other's payments.
• Chain analysis can link all your activity to one identity.
• Your balance becomes visible to anyone who knows the address.

The current workaround: generate a fresh address for every transaction. This requires interaction. Every sender needs to contact you for a new address.

Static addresses (donation links, social-profile addresses) break this completely.

Section 2 · How Silent Payments work

Silent Payments (BIP 352) solve this with a static shareable address that generates a unique on-chain address for each sender, without any interaction verify×DON'T TRUST, VERIFYClaim: BIP 352 (Silent Payments) defines a non-interactive payment scheme using static recipient addresses.Verify at: BIP 352 specification ↗ Source 1 in the list belowBIP 352 was authored by Josie Baker and others. The scheme uses ECDH-based key derivation..

The sender does the work

1. The sender takes your published Silent Payment address.
2. Combined with their own UTXOUnspent Transaction Output (UTXO)A piece of bitcoin you received and have not yet spent, like a separate bill in a wallet. Your balance is the total of your UTXOs. Spending uses up whole UTXOs and creates new ones, usually including change sent back to you, and each UTXO carries its own history, which matters for privacy.Full definition and a cryptographic computation, they derive a unique address to send to.
3. No two senders derive the same address.
4. The receiver scans the blockchainBlockchainA public transaction ledger, grouped into blocks that each link to the one before. Every Bitcoin full node checks each block itself and follows the valid chain with the most accumulated proof of work. Recent blocks can occasionally be replaced (a reorganization); the number of computers does not decide validity.Full definition to find payments (more computationally intensive than standard wallets, but tractable).

Result: one address to share, many unique on-chain receiving addresses, no linkage between them.

Section 3 · Status as of 2026

• BIP 352 is finalized and in development across multiple wallet projects.
• Wallet support is early. Verify which wallets currently support Silent Payments before relying on the feature.
• Resource: silentpayments.xyz (community tracker for implementation status).

For now, the practical privacy baseline for most users remains: do not reuse addresses, label UTXOs in Sparrow, and avoid combining KYCKnow Your Customer (KYC)Identity checks that banks, brokers and regulated Bitcoin exchanges must run under anti-money-laundering rules, collecting your name, address, date of birth, an ID number and often a photo ID. Buying through a KYC exchange links your identity to the bitcoin you buy and the addresses you withdraw it to.Full definition with no-KYC UTXOs. See Sparrow Wallet: Complete Setup Guide.