Stealth Addresses

What they solve

On public blockchains, a single public address is visible to everyone. Once that address is linked to a person, all activity can be tracked and profiled. Stealth addresses let receivers accept payments without exposing a permanent receiving address. Each payment goes to a one time address that only the recipient can detect and spend from.

How they work, simply

1. The recipient publishes a single public identifier. This can be a long lived public key or a readable handle that maps to a public key.

2. When someone wants to pay, their wallet generates a fresh ephemeral key and derives a shared secret with the recipient's public key. The sender uses that secret to compute a unique one time address and publishes the transaction including the ephemeral public key.

3. The recipient scans transactions, computes the same shared secret using their private key and the sender's ephemeral key, derives the matching one time private key, and claims the funds.

From an outside observer's point of view, every payment looks like a transfer to a random address. The mapping between those addresses and the recipient's public identifier is only known to the sender and receiver.

The math, in plain language

Stealth addresses rely on elliptic curve Diffie Hellman. Two parties combine their secrets so both can derive the same shared value. That shared value is used as an offset to create a fresh key pair. An attacker who sees the public keys cannot reconstruct the shared secret without knowing one of the private keys.

You do not need to understand the equations to use stealth addresses safely. The important point is this: the cryptography creates a unique address for each payment that only the intended recipient can reconstruct.

UX and wallet flow

For users, stealth addresses should feel seamless.

• A recipient creates a single GhostPay or wallet handle and shares it.

• A sender clicks pay and the wallet generates the ephemeral key, computes the one time address, and sends the transaction.

• The recipient's wallet detects the incoming one time address and offers to sweep or consolidate funds to the user's main wallet.

GhostWare will provide client libraries so wallets can implement the scan and sweep process efficiently without burdening users with manual steps.

Solana specifics

On Solana, stealth outputs are compatible with both SOL and SPL tokens. Implementation notes include:

• Ephemeral public keys are included in transaction memos or as small data fields so the recipient can discover the necessary information to derive the one time key.

• Wallets perform local scans of recent blocks and compute candidate addresses derived from their private key. This is done client side to avoid revealing which addresses belong to a user.

• Auto sweep operations move funds from one time addresses to the user’s main account once the recipient confirms ownership.

Security considerations

• Keep private keys safe. Stealth addresses protect linkability but not key custody. If a private key is compromised, past and future receipts tied to that key can be at risk unless forward secrecy is applied.

• Use short lived ephemeral keys for senders to reduce exposure.

• Combine stealth addresses with ShadowNet routing and MPC key rotation for stronger protection against network and timing analysis.

Interoperability and standards

Stealth address schemes are already used in other systems and libraries. GhostWare will follow established best practices and provide clear specification and examples so wallets and services can interoperate.

Example flow (concise)

1. Alice publishes GhostPay handle alice.gw.

2. Bob wants to pay 1 SOL to Alice. His wallet generates ephemeral key r and computes the one time address P_stealth. Bob sends 1 SOL to P_stealth and includes R in the transaction.

3. Alice scans the chain, finds R, computes the shared secret, derives the matching private key, and spends or sweeps the funds to her main account.

Stealth addresses are one of the simplest and most effective tools in the privacy toolbox. They remove a major source of linkage on public blockchains while keeping payments simple and verifiable.