Definition
Silent Payments (BIP352) is a Bitcoin wallet standard for static, reusable receiving addresses that preserve privacy. A user publishes one silent payment address; every sender automatically derives a fresh, unique on-chain address from it, so no two payments ever land on the same address and outside observers cannot tell that multiple payments went to the same recipient. Unlike BIP47, it requires no on-chain notification transaction and no prior interaction between the parties.
How the address is derived
The sender computes a tweak from the hash of their transaction inputs and the recipient's published scan key, combines it with their own input private keys via Elliptic-Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) to reach a shared secret, and uses that secret to derive the one-time output address. Because the derivation is anchored to the specific inputs being spent, each payment produces a different address with no extra on-chain data and no interaction needed.
The scanning cost
The main trade-off is on the receiving side. Without a notification transaction telling the wallet where to look, the recipient must scan the blockchain, performing an ECDH calculation against the inputs of candidate transactions to detect payments addressed to them. This shifts cost from on-chain fees to local computation and storage — a reasonable trade for many, and an area of active wallet optimization.
Silent Payments and BIP47 PayNyms solve the same problem — a safely reusable address — with different trade-offs. Both relate conceptually to the older stealth address idea.
In Simple Terms
Silent Payments (BIP352) is a Bitcoin wallet standard for static, reusable receiving addresses that preserve privacy. A user publishes one silent payment address; every sender…