What is a stealth address?

On a public blockchain, sending every message to the same address would expose your entire social graph. A stealth address solves this: each message is sent to a unique one-time address that only the recipient can detect and spend from, using a shared secret derived from their keys.

Because two messages to the same person land on two unrelated-looking addresses, an observer scanning the chain sees a scatter of one-off addresses with no way to cluster them into a conversation. PrivaMesh uses stealth addresses so the "who talks to whom" metadata is never written down anywhere.

A worked example makes the mechanism concrete. Your contact publishes a view key and a spend key. To send you a message, the sender combines their own ephemeral key with your view key to derive a one-time address that only your keys can recognise. They never learn your main address, and the address they used will never be reused.

Scanning is the cost of this design. Because addresses are unlinkable by construction, your device has to check candidate transactions against your view key rather than looking up an inbox. That work happens locally, which is exactly why nobody else can do it on your behalf without seeing your social graph.

Stealth addressing is the difference between a public ledger that exposes your contacts and one that does not. Without it, on-chain messaging would map every relationship you have; with it, a chain observer sees a scatter of one-off addresses that cannot be clustered into conversations.