> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://coti.io/blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Stealth Addresses Explained: How They Work and What They Don't Hide - URL: https://coti.io/blog/stealth-addresses-explained/ - Published: 2026-10-10T20:30:50.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-10T20:30:50.000Z - Author: Antonio - Tags: Privacy Stealth addresses let someone pay you without the payment landing on an address the world can tie to you. You publish one reusable stealth meta-address, and each sender uses it to create a fresh, one-time address that only you and the sender can link to you, and only you can spend from. They hide who received a payment, not that a payment happened, and a 2023 study of Umbra, then Ethereum's most-used stealth address tool, found they were often undone by what users did afterwards. This guide explains how stealth addresses work on Ethereum, Bitcoin and Monero, what they leave visible, and how COTI plans to use them. *Current as of October 10, 2026.* ## The Short Answer **What stealth addresses hide** - The link between a payment and the recipient, hidden from outside observers (the sender still knows) **What they don't hide** - That a transfer happened - On transparent chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin, the sender's address and the amount - Anything your later transactions reveal, such as moving funds to an address already tied to you **Where you'll find them** - Ethereum: the ERC-5564 standard - Bitcoin: Silent Payments (BIP-352) - Monero: built into every transaction - COTI: shown in code samples for Interphase, a planned product. COTI's roadmap puts its cross-chain private transfers in Q4 2026 to Q1 2027 (as of October 10, 2026) ## How Stealth Addresses Work Think of the meta-address as a mailbox number rather than a street address: people can send you things through it, but it never shows up on the parcels. On Ethereum, the [ERC-5564](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5564?ref=coti.io) standard sets out the flow in four steps: 1. **You publish a stealth meta-address.** It usually contains two public keys: a spending key and a viewing key. 2. **The sender creates a one-time address.** Their wallet picks a random one-time key, combines it with your viewing key to compute a secret that only the two of you can work out, and uses that secret to derive a fresh address from your spending key. 3. **The sender pays and announces.** The payment goes to the fresh address, and the sender publishes an announcement on-chain with their one-time public key and a short view tag. 4. **You scan and claim.** Your wallet checks announcements with your viewing key. The view tag lets it skip most of them quickly. In Vitalik Buterin's [guide to stealth addresses](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/01/20/stealth.html?ref=coti.io), only about 1 in 256 needs a full check. When one matches, your wallet works out the private key for that address. The standard's stated aim is that senders can create these addresses without any back-and-forth, and only the recipient can access them. In practice, that means nobody has to ask you for a new address each time. ## Where the Idea Came From The concept is older than Ethereum. The CryptoNote v2.0 whitepaper, dated October 17, 2013 and published under the name Nicolas van Saberhagen, described one-time keys that give every incoming payment its own public key, which the paper argued observers could not link. Monero later built on that design. On January 6, 2014, Bitcoin developer Peter Todd proposed stealth addresses for Bitcoin on the [bitcoin-dev mailing list](https://mirror.b10c.me/lists/bitcoindev/20140106120338.GA14918@savin/?ref=coti.io), crediting a Bitcointalk forum user known as ByteCoin, whose earlier post he cites, with the original idea. ## Stealth Addresses on Ethereum, Bitcoin and Monero **Ethereum: ERC-5564** - Status: Final, as of October 10, 2026 - Created: August 13, 2022, by Toni Wahrstätter, Matt Solomon, Ben DiFrancesco and Vitalik Buterin - How it works: a single announcer contract publishes the data recipients scan for. A companion standard, ERC-6538, defines a registry where people can publish their stealth meta-address **Bitcoin: Silent Payments (BIP-352)** - Status: Complete, assigned March 9, 2023 - What's different: the [BIP-352 specification](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0352.mediawiki?ref=coti.io) describes static payment addresses with no on-chain notifications, so there is no announcement transaction to spot - The trade-off, in the specification's words: "These benefits come at the cost of requiring wallets to scan the blockchain in order to detect payments." It notes this is hard for light wallets **Monero: on by default** - Monero's [Moneropedia](https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/stealthaddress.html?ref=coti.io) says senders create random one-time addresses for every transaction on the recipient's behalf - Stealth addresses are only one layer. Monero uses [ring signatures](https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/ringsignatures.html?ref=coti.io) to obscure the sender and RingCT, mandatory since September 2017 according to Moneropedia, to hide amounts. Without those extra layers, a stealth address protects only the recipient ## What Stealth Addresses Don't Hide **That a transfer happened.** Vitalik Buterin writes in his guide that hiding the fact a transfer happened is impossible, while hiding who the recipient is may be much more viable. **The sender and the amount, on transparent chains.** ERC-5564 is designed to stop observers linking the stealth address to the recipient. The sender's address and the transfer itself stay as visible as any other Ethereum transaction. **The gas problem.** If you're sent a token or an NFT, the stealth address holds no ETH to pay fees. As Vitalik Buterin puts it: "That account has 0 ETH in it, and so there is no way to pay transaction fees." Topping it up from your main wallet would link the two. ERC-5564 lists this as a known privacy issue in its security considerations and suggests that senders attach a small amount of ETH to cover fees. **What you do next.** A [2023 study](https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.01703?ref=coti.io) by Alex Kovács and István András Seres looked at Umbra, the most widely used stealth address implementation on Ethereum at the time. Using heuristics, the researchers linked 48.5% of Umbra payments on Ethereum, 25.8% on Polygon, 65.7% on Arbitrum and 52.6% on Optimism to an Ethereum address the recipient had already used. That is an address, not a real-world identity, and the cause was user behaviour, not broken cryptography. Most links came from people withdrawing funds to the same address they had registered with. A smaller share came from people withdrawing to the address that sent the payment. Separately, many users collected several stealth payments into one address, which tied those payments to each other even where it didn't reveal the recipient. ![Bar chart titled Umbra stealth payments were often re-linked (2023 study), showing the share of Umbra stealth payments researchers linked to an address the recipient had already used: 48.5% on Ethereum, 25.8% on Polygon, 65.7% on Arbitrum and 52.6% on Optimism](https://coti.io/blog/content/images/2026/10/stealth-addresses-explained_ASSET_2.webp) The lesson isn't that stealth addresses don't work. It's that they protect the recipient only as well as the transactions that follow. ## How COTI Plans to Use Stealth Addresses COTI's planned Interphase product, first named on COTI's official Telegram on October 6, 2026 and presented as the flagship of [COTI 2.0](https://coti.io/blog/coti-2-0-explained-interphase-coti-global-and-the-new-roadmap/) on October 8, is expected to use them. Illustrative code samples on [coti.io](https://coti.io/?ref=coti.io), written for a developer kit COTI hasn't released, show Interphase deriving a one-time stealth address for each transfer. - **Status:** planned. COTI's [roadmap](https://coti.io/roadmap/?ref=coti.io) puts private cross-chain transfers between Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin and TRON in Q4 2026 to Q1 2027\. As of October 10, 2026, COTI hasn't published Interphase documentation or code, and it hasn't said which stealth address scheme Interphase will use. That's a real question: ERC-5564 is built for Ethereum-style chains and BIP-352 for Bitcoin, while Interphase targets chains with different key types. - **The gas problem:** the roadmap says a transfer will only count as done once it automatically delivers spending gas to the recipient. That targets the empty-address problem above, though COTI hasn't yet explained how. - **The behaviour problem:** the roadmap also plans a privacy check that warns users when a withdrawal could link back to them, for example by reusing a known address or matching an exact public amount. Address reuse is the pattern behind most links in the Umbra study. **Our take:** stealth addresses and COTI's existing privacy cover different gaps. On COTI today, the [private token standard](https://docs.coti.io/coti-documentation/build-on-coti/tools/contracts-library/tokens/private-erc20?ref=coti.io) (live on COTI's mainnet, per docs.coti.io, as of October 10, 2026) encrypts balances and amounts, while sender and receiver addresses stay visible in transfer events. Stealth addresses do the reverse: they hide who received a payment, while amounts stay visible on transparent chains. The two are complementary, which is why Monero layers several techniques. Whether Interphase will combine them hasn't been announced as of October 10, 2026\. Neither hides timing: COTI's [Privacy-on-Demand documentation](https://docs.coti.io/coti-documentation/privacy-on-demand/what-is-privacy-on-demand?ref=coti.io) says timing, gas and which contract was called can still leak, and on transparent chains stealth payments are timestamped like any other. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Do stealth addresses hide the amount? Not on their own. On Ethereum and Bitcoin, the amount sent to a stealth address is visible like any other transfer. Monero hides amounts with a separate technique, RingCT, alongside its stealth addresses. ### How is a stealth address different from using a new address for every payment? The privacy effect for the recipient is similar, but you don't have to hand each sender a fresh address. You publish one meta-address, and every sender's wallet derives a new one-time address from it without contacting you. ### What does a stealth meta-address look like? It is a longer public identifier that combines your spending and viewing public keys. Under ERC-5564, it never receives funds directly. It only tells senders' wallets how to derive your one-time addresses. ## Where to Go From Here Stealth addresses are one of the simplest ways to keep payments from piling up on a single public address, as long as you know what they leave visible. To follow when COTI's Interphase brings them to cross-chain transfers, watch COTI's public [roadmap](https://coti.io/roadmap/?ref=coti.io). For how COTI already keeps amounts private, read our explainer on [garbled circuits](https://coti.io/blog/garbled-circuits-explained/) or COTI's [private token documentation](https://docs.coti.io/coti-documentation/build-on-coti/tools/contracts-library/tokens/private-erc20?ref=coti.io). *Details checked October 10, 2026\. Standards, research and product plans can change. Nothing here is financial or legal advice. COTI will never ask for your seed phrase or private key, and only coti.io, docs.coti.io and COTI's official X and Telegram carry announcements.* ## Sources - [ERC-5564: Stealth Addresses](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5564?ref=coti.io), Ethereum Improvement Proposals, created August 13, 2022, accessed October 10, 2026 - [ERC-6538: Stealth Meta-Address Registry](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-6538?ref=coti.io), Ethereum Improvement Proposals, created January 24, 2023, accessed October 10, 2026 - [An incomplete guide to stealth addresses](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/01/20/stealth.html?ref=coti.io), Vitalik Buterin, published January 20, 2023, accessed October 10, 2026 - [BIP-352: Silent Payments](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0352.mediawiki?ref=coti.io), Bitcoin Improvement Proposals, assigned March 9, 2023, accessed October 10, 2026 - [Stealth Addresses (bitcoin-dev mailing list, mirror)](https://mirror.b10c.me/lists/bitcoindev/20140106120338.GA14918@savin/?ref=coti.io), Peter Todd, published January 6, 2014, accessed October 10, 2026 - [CryptoNote v 2.0 whitepaper (archived copy)](https://web.archive.org/web/20201028121818/https://cryptonote.org/whitepaper.pdf), Nicolas van Saberhagen, published October 17, 2013, accessed October 10, 2026 - [Ring signatures (Moneropedia)](https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/ringsignatures.html?ref=coti.io), Monero, accessed October 10, 2026 - [Stealth address (Moneropedia)](https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/stealthaddress.html?ref=coti.io), Monero, accessed October 10, 2026 - [RingCT (Moneropedia)](https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/ringCT.html?ref=coti.io), Monero, accessed October 10, 2026 - [Anonymity Analysis of the Umbra Stealth Address Scheme on Ethereum](https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.01703?ref=coti.io), Alex Kovács and István András Seres, arXiv preprint, published August 3, 2023, accessed October 10, 2026 - [coti.io](https://coti.io/?ref=coti.io), COTI, accessed October 10, 2026 - [COTI official Telegram post naming Interphase](https://t.me/cotichannel/3254?ref=coti.io), COTI, published October 6, 2026, accessed October 10, 2026 - [COTI roadmap](https://coti.io/roadmap/?ref=coti.io), COTI, accessed October 10, 2026 - [Private ERC20](https://docs.coti.io/coti-documentation/build-on-coti/tools/contracts-library/tokens/private-erc20?ref=coti.io), COTI documentation, accessed October 10, 2026 - [What is Privacy-on-Demand](https://docs.coti.io/coti-documentation/privacy-on-demand/what-is-privacy-on-demand?ref=coti.io), COTI documentation, accessed October 10, 2026