Stealth Addresses

The Basics

Stealth addresses are an important part of Haven’s inherent privacy. They allow and require the sender to create random one-time addresses for every transaction on behalf of the recipient. The recipient can publish just one address, yet have all of his/her incoming payments go to unique addresses on the blockchain, where they cannot be linked back to either the recipient’s published address or any other transactions’ addresses. By using stealth addresses, only the sender and receiver can determine where a payment was sent.

When you create a Haven account you’ll have a private view-key, a private spend-key, and a Public Address. The spend-key is used to send payments, the view-key is used to display incoming transactions destined for your account, and the Public Address is for receiving payments. Both the spend-key and view-key are used to build your Haven address. You can have a “watch only” wallet that only uses the view-key. This feature can be used for accounting or auditing purposes but is currently unreliable due to the inability to track outgoing transactions. You can decide who can see your Haven balance by sharing your view-key. Haven is private by default and optionally semi-transparent!

When using the Haven Wallet all this is handled by the software. Sending Haven is as easy as entering the destination address, the amount, and pressing Send. To recieve Haven, simply provide the sender your Public Address.

To learn how Haven prevents tracking history (untraceability), see ring-signatures.