Oddbean new post about login | logout can you please explain how silent payments work in simple words? i'm reading bip352 and it's getting a bit confusing. thanks!
BASIC SCHEME The recipient publishes their silent payment address, a single 32 byte public key: X = x*G The sender picks an input containing a public key: I = i*G The sender tweaks the silent payment address with the public key of their input: X' = hash(i*X)*G + X Since i*X == x*I (Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange), the recipient can detect the payment by calculating hash(x*I)*G + X for each input key I in the blockchain and seeing if it matches an output in the corresponding transaction. via https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-March/020180.html
Someone sends funds to an address only you can accept. Only they know it has been created and funded though. You scan the network for payments to addresses that could only have been created for you. When you find one, you check its balance and add it to your wallets balance. It's like Someone releasing a "message in a bottle" into the ocean with a message in a language only you in the whole world can understand. Someone else can find the bottle and look at the message but it will be gibberish to them. Only the intended person (you) can read it.