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SIMPLIFIED EXPLANATION OF SILENT PAYMENTS

Silent Payments is a Bitcoin upgrade that hides transaction amounts and recipient addresses, making payments more private.

Here's how it works:

1. Taproot Output: A special type of Bitcoin address that looks like a regular address but can hide multiple conditions for spending the coins.

2. Scan Key: A special key that allows the recipient to scan the blockchain for transactions sent to them, without revealing their identity.

3. Spend Key: A private key that allows the recipient to spend the coins received through a Silent Payment.

Think of it like a secret mailbox:

- The sender sends a letter (coins) to a secret mailbox (Taproot Output).

- The recipient has a special key (Scan Key) to find the mailbox and retrieve the letter.

- Only the recipient can open the mailbox and read the letter (spend the coins) using their private key (Spend Key).

Silent Payments make Bitcoin transactions more private and secure especially for regions such as Africa!

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Silent payments is not well supported by wallets and exchanges though

The BIP has been merged into the bitcoin BIP repo. The math is sound.

Wallets like Cake, Wasabi, Seedsigner, Dana wallet, Silentium, BitBox 02 already have send and receive support from most.

Libraries like BDK are working on it (mainly waiting for Josie's PR merge to the secP library to do most of the heavy lifting).

Exchanges, would implement it eventually once they understand how this saves them in terms of efficiency. Once again the math is SOUND!!!!!!!

Amazing!!