Ethereum: Vitalik Buterin considers a more discreet and private way to transact on Ethereum!

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder and most popular figure on the Ethereum blockchain network, has expressed his concern about the lack of stealth addresses has shared his thoughts on the use of stealth addresses as a viable way to maintain true privacy on blockchain networks.

In a blog post titled “An incomplete guide to stealth addresses“An incomplete guide to stealth addresses,” the blockchain developer emphasized how much more vital maintaining privacy is in the present day. According to him, every transaction made on the blockchain records different data that puts the sender’s business in the public eye.

While he noted that a range of solutions have been proposed, he sees stealth addresses as a solution that could be viable in the long term for the Ethereum blockchain if development work is dedicated to it.

To describe how stealth addresses work, he used two hypothetical names, Alice and Bob. He said that the technology can help Alice send money to Bob and that Bob, in turn, can use the addresses to protect his identity as the recipient of the funds, which can be an asset or a non-fungible token (NFT).

He pointed out that stealth addresses are often generated by Alice or Bob, but that they are often controlled by the recipient. According to his note;

“Bob generates and keeps secret an expense key, and uses this key to generate a stealth meta-address. He transmits this meta-address to Alice (or stores it on ENS). Alice can perform a calculation on this meta-address to generate a stealth address belonging to Bob. She can then send all the goods she wants to that address, and Bob will have full control. Along with the transfer, she publishes some additional cryptographic data (an ephemeral pubkey) on the channel that helps Bob discover that this address belongs to him.”

Vitalik Buterin pointed out that there has been no viable stealth address solution so far, even though it offers a more functional and comprehensive privacy solution compared to the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash crypto blender.

Vitalik Buterin on the’future of privacy

He believes that developers will release more functional and usable products when they focus optimally on developing stealth addresses that can be easily implemented.

“Basic stealth addresses can be implemented fairly quickly today’and could give a significant boost to the privacy of Ethereum users,” he said, adding that “they require some work on the wallet side to support them. That said, I think wallets should start to evolve into a more natively multi-address model. […] for other privacy-related reasons as well.”

He noted that there may be some challenges, including longer-term usage issues. Rather than being discouraged, Vitalik Buterin said he was optimistic that these issues could be resolved over time.

“In the longer term, these problems can be solved, but the long term’stealth address ecosystem looks like one that would really rely heavily on zero-knowledge evidence.”