Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Proposes ‘Stealth Address’ System to Enhance Blockchain Privacy – Here’s How it Works

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin has proposed a brand new “stealth deal with” system for Ethereum that may dramatically enhance and simplify the workflow for attaining privateness for peculiar customers.

According to a weblog post printed by Buterin over the weekend and titled An incomplete information to stealth addresses, the proposed system would deliver the identical privateness properties as producing new addresses for every transaction somebody receives.

The solely distinction could be that this could occur with none work wanted for the receiver.

Privacy stays a big problem on Ethereum

In the weblog put up, Buterin admitted that privateness – or the shortage thereof – is a big drawback for Ethereum customers, saying:

“One of the biggest remaining challenges within the Ethereum ecosystem is privateness. By default, something that goes onto a public blockchain is public […] In follow, utilizing the complete suite of Ethereum functions includes making a good portion of your life public for anybody to see and analyze.”

He added that bettering this case for customers is “well known” as an necessary drawback that builders ought to work on.

Secret spending keys and stealth meta-addresses

Specifically, the system proposed by Buterin would work by having wallets generate so-called stealth meta-addresses for receiving funds utilizing a secret “spending key” that solely the receiving occasion in a transaction has entry to. The stealth deal with is then shared with the sender, who should additionally publish a chunk of cryptographic knowledge referred to as an ephemeral pubkey on-chain for the receiver to perceive that the deal with belongs to him.

To allow the era of each the key spending key and the general public stealth meta-address, Buterin proposed to use a system often known as the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. According to Buterin, this technique is a foundational a part of trendy cryptography, and would accomplish precisely what is required for stealth addresses to be carried out on Ethereum.

The Ethereum founder went on to share an in depth illustration of the workflow with the brand new system:

Zero-knowledge proofs

In conclusion, the Ethereum creator admitted that stealth addresses do introduce “some longer-term usability considerations,” together with issues round so-called “social restoration” of misplaced keys. He stated that these considerations might be merely accepted for now, however made it clear {that a} extra lasting resolution will doubtless rely “actually closely” on zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.