Ethereum’s Stealth Upgrade: ERC-5564 Brings Programmable Privacy to the Public Blockchain – The Missing Piece is Here!
Ethereum is finally adding privacy at the transaction layer without turning into a privacy coin, without obfuscation tricks, and without leaving its transparent, auditable roots. The tool? ERC-5564: Stealth Addresses.
Why Ethereum Needed This
Ethereum is the most transparent blockchain ever built — every transfer, every smart-contract call, every wallet balance is visible to the world. That’s great for trust and composability, but terrible for privacy.
- Donors don’t want their giving history public.
- Payroll shouldn’t reveal salaries.
- Investors want private positions.
- DAOs need confidential treasury movements.
Until now, users had to leave Ethereum for Monero, Zcash, or mixers (which carry their own risks and regulatory baggage). ERC-5564 changes that.
How Stealth Addresses Actually Work (Simple Version)
Recipient prepares a stealth meta-address — basically a pair of public keys (spending + viewing). They can publish this once (via ERC-6538 registry or just share the string starting with
st:eth:).Sender takes that meta-address and generates a brand-new one-time stealth address + ephemeral public key on the fly. No prior communication needed.
Sender sends ETH, ERC-20, or even calls smart contracts to that stealth address.
Sender calls the official ERC-5564 Announcer contract (deterministic address:
0x55649E01B5Df198D18D95b5cc5051630cfD45564). This emits a single on-chain event containing:- The stealth address
- Ephemeral public key
- A tiny viewTag (first byte of a hash — super efficient filter)
Recipient scans announcements using only their viewing private key. The viewTag lets them skip 99% of events instantly. When it matches, they compute the exact stealth private key and spend the funds.
Result? On-chain, the payment looks like it went to a completely random, never-before-seen address. No link between sender and receiver is visible to outsiders — yet the recipient can prove ownership privately if needed.
Technical Highlights (from the official EIP)
- Fully agnostic to crypto schemes (SECP256k1 is the first implemented, others like SECP256r1 or lattice-based possible).
- ViewTag reduces scanning cost by ~6x.
- Works with tokens, NFTs, and future account-abstraction flows.
- Backward compatible — no Ethereum hard fork required.
- Singleton Announcer contract already deployed and live.
Real-World Implementations & Tools
- Umbra Cash – battle-tested stealth payment app (already supporting ETH + ERC-20).
- Open-source Python, JS, and Solidity libraries on GitHub.
- Wallet integrations and demos popping up rapidly in late 2025 / early 2026.
- Projects exploring stealth + EIP-7702, stealth NFTs, confidential DAOs, and more.
Not a Privacy Coin — Better
Privacy coins hide everything. ERC-5564 hides only the recipient link while keeping full auditability and programmability inside Ethereum’s rich ecosystem. Regulators and institutions love this balance — you can still prove ownership or comply with KYC when required.
It’s infrastructure-level evolution, exactly as @MerlijnTrader said.
What This Means for Ethereum in 2026+
- DeFi becomes truly private where users want it.
- Institutional adoption gets easier (no more “everyone sees my treasury moves”).
- Competition with Layer-2 privacy solutions and alternative L1s intensifies — in a good way.
- MEV bots and front-runners lose some edge on private flows.
Ethereum isn’t becoming “private by default” (that would break too many things). Instead, it’s giving users and developers the opt-in programmable privacy tool they’ve been asking for.
Final Thoughts
The public blockchain just got a stealth mode that actually works with the entire ecosystem. No more choosing between transparency and privacy — you can have both, on demand.
This is the kind of quiet but foundational upgrade that turns Ethereum from “the transparent settlement layer” into “the programmable financial operating system the world actually wants to use.”
Big thanks to the ERC-5564 authors (Toni Wahrstätter, Matt Solomon, Ben DiFrancesco, and input from Vitalik) and everyone shipping implementations right now.
What do you think — will stealth addresses become as standard as ERC-20? Drop your thoughts below!
Tags: #ethereum #erc5564 #stealthaddresses #privacy #defi #crypto #blockchain #web3 #infrastructure