Silent Payments? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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2040 sats \ 29 comments \ @siggy47 7 Dec bitcoin

As some of you may know, I'm in the process of helping set up a merchant web site with bitcoin and lighting payments. Yes, it is a matter of the blind leading the blind. To increase privacy, he wants to use a silent payments receive address. Does anyone have any experience with this? We are playing with Cake Wallet. Someone I was talking to last night also recommended Silentium. I checked the github, and it seems pretty experimental right now.

Does anyone have experience with silent payments, or have any strong feelings for or against?

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163 sats \ 0 replies \ @moel 7 Dec

Would recommend Cake.

Don’t use Silentium anymore! Silentium is no longer maintained.

257 sats \ 9 replies \ @justin_shocknet 7 Dec

privacy focused products spread only through virtue signaling, not substance. #697899

Silent payments are total nonsense in this context. Literally 0 reason for this merchant to use them.

Even if we ignore for a moment the fact that there's only one client and it's a shitcoin wallet...

It's the merchant's own website, so who's he getting privacy from? He doesn't need to protect his addresses from himself. Each buyer can already get a unique payment address from the site and he doesn't need to reveal an xpub or anything because he's serving the addresses directly.

Silent payments also doesn't obviate the need for him to conduct proper UTXO management with received funds if he wants to maintain privacy, which if he thinks silent payments are applicable to him and outsourcing setup it means he doesn't have the knowledge to do correctly anyway so it's all moot.

38 sats \ 6 replies \ @siggy47 OP 7 Dec

Case closed. I'll copy and paste your response. I was just reading zaprite faq. There is no need.

43 sats \ 5 replies \ @ek 7 Dec

What did you read in Zaprite‘s FAQ? I don’t see silent payments mentioned.

141 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 OP 7 Dec

No. I didn't mean that zaprite mentions silent payments. I just meant that I don't think silent payments would provide a huge benefit. I also think as a practical matter that no one is going to blindly sent 500kUSD worth of bitcoin by clicking a web icon. I'm sure there will be back and forth communications, and a fresh address or two would be used.

43 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 7 Dec

He also needs to use fresh addresses for each payment for proof of payments

85 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 OP 7 Dec

Right. I think he is imagining a seamless web experience without much hands on. I'm certain that's not even a realistic fiat experience.

43 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 7 Dec

Does he not have experience with fiat payments? Zaprite should be a familiar UX.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 7 Dec

Oh no. Sure he is. He's been in business for 40 years. He's not familiar with bitcoin

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105 sats \ 1 reply \ @supertestnet 7 Dec

Silent payments are total nonsense in this context. Literally 0 reason for this merchant to use them

One reason might be limiting server-side complexity

Silent payments involve basically zero server configuration, you just post a piece of text on your website and you're done

If, instead, you want the website to serve a unique address for every user, the server needs to run something like btcpay or electrum and the company needs to pay a dev to learn what to install, how to use its api, and how to connect it to their website

Silent payments = easier = better

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 7 Dec

the server needs to run something like btcpay or electrum

Not really, whatever database that's taking orders or serving the catalog can just as easily have thousands of HD addresses dumped into it. Heck, even a day to day wallet that used Nostr for comms could provide those addresses to completely static JS on a site...

Silent payments on the other need a service to actually find the payments, and the user profile shows it won't actually be more private. If we're to assume interactivity with the payment it gets even worse...

Privacy feature = no substance = pointless distraction = worser

64 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 7 Dec

Silent payments are still in infancy and best suited for tips and p2p payments. Not good for running on an online store.

I would start with BTCPay server running on Voltage and then once your friend is ready to run a node, they can setup their own BTCPay server for maximum privacy and sovereignty.

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @a40ecaacec 9 Dec

Why not use lightning only instead of both ln and on-chain? Lightning provides you with greater privacy also you could use bolt12. For example phoenixd + btcpay/lnbits/alby hub

43 sats \ 1 reply \ @kruw 8 Dec

To increase privacy, he wants to use a silent payments receive address.

If he's a merchant, using a silent payment address won't do anything to increase his privacy since he's already interacting with his customer. If he wants to protect his customers, suppliers, and himself from being tracked on-chain, he should use BTCPay Server's coinjoin plugin: https://docs.btcpayserver.org/Wabisabi/

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 8 Dec

Thanks. I'll pass it on.

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 7 Dec

I think its a good idea, but it looks that unfortunately there are only a few wallets that support it so far.

You could set it up with Cake wallet for now and switch to Blue wallet when its ready.

43 sats \ 12 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Dec

Better start reading here: https://silentpayments.xyz/docs/explained/

For the moment are working with Bitcoin Core.

To increase privacy, he wants to use a silent payments receive address

LN offer enough privacy if is done well.

0 sats \ 11 replies \ @siggy47 OP 7 Dec

Re LN, yes. He is setting that up for smaller payments ($50-$1000 US). He is thinking of silent payments for big orders on chain (500k-1million US)

43 sats \ 10 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Dec

Yes I understand that. Nobody wants to reveal to the payer the destination of the funds received. Only that silent payments are quite new and not tested enough and present in many wallets, to be recommended for already production cases. I will proceed with caution.

That's why you should not reuse addresses, rotate various wallets (xpubs) and occasionally do coinjoins (even that you will do it to yourself). Also onchain txs should not be done in a public way, presenting a QR code that comes from an xpub that can be known publicly.

I would do onchain txs in a more private way, p2p, indicating to the payer specific "temporary" addresses,, not the final holding ones. I am not comfortable with publishing onchain addresses on a public website that can be read by anyone else.

You can still use Sparrow with PayNyms.

Remember the 3 levels stash: hold, cache, spending.

43 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Dec

Additional to this, you may look into Payjoin with BTCpay https://docs.btcpayserver.org/Payjoin/

64 sats \ 3 replies \ @Lux 7 Dec

All this trouble, when he could just learn to use BTCPay server :)

73 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Dec

Yeah BTCpay is the best for such case. The thing is that they are quite new into this thing named "running nodes".

121 sats \ 1 reply \ @Lux 7 Dec

you either run a node or pay someone to do it for you

eg. https://opennode.com/

i know you already proposed this, but it's a pain to see the struggle :)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Lux 8 Dec

sry guys, i felt like I shat on your hard work. i'm just being lazy

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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 OP 7 Dec

I agree with what you said. The problem is he has web guys putting in an address, and I dont know if he's ready for regularly switching addresses. We went to a meetup last night with a guy who has been testing silent payments, and it got him excited. Basically the lazy way to post an address without giving up privacy. BTW, he just joined telegram and I had him search for you, so he might contact you soon. I can't answer many questions he has.

43 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Dec

NEVER ever post a single address on a website to accept payments. If you really want to accept onchain payments on a public site, at least generate a new one for each payment and also rotate the backend wallet, not receiving always in the same wallet.

If you want a static address, use PayNyms.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kruw 8 Dec

PayNym is a TERRIBLE type of static address, Silent Payments use less block space and have better privacy.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Dec

I know. That's why I do not use them. But people insisting in using a single static address find it useful. For me is not. I use LN.

I find BTCPay with payjoin a good option for public shops. Powerful and elegant.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 OP 7 Dec

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