Ethereum developers build a way to make stealth transactions

On April 1, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted out a plea for enhanced transaction privacy. Little over a month later, his wish was granted in the form of Umbra—a protocol for “stealth” payments on Ethereum.

“Next step in improving Ethereum’s privacy (in addition to ongoing improvements to Tornado Cash and the like): some clean easy-to-use stealth-address-like scheme to send coins to an ENS name without publishing to the world that they got coins,” wrote Buterin.  

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a way of associating complex Ethereum addresses with human readable names, such as “Decrypt.eth.” So when you want to send money to someone, you just type in their .eth name, without having to copy and paste their address. However, connecting your name to your finances does have some privacy concerns, as Decrypt pointed out. So, Buterin’s tweet is asking for a way to send money to someone, using their name, without broadcasting this to the world.

As it turns out,…