What is a stealth address in Monero?
A stealth address in Monero is a one-time destination created for a payment to you. It helps keep your public wallet address off the blockchain—the shared record of transactions—so someone looking at that record cannot simply match a payment to your address.
Your wallet address is not the address recorded for each payment
When you want to receive XMR, Monero’s currency, you give the sender a receiving address from your wallet. Think of it as payment instructions you can share, rather than an account number that appears beside every payment in a public ledger.
The sender’s wallet uses those instructions to create a unique, one-time destination for your payment. This destination is commonly called a stealth address.
If someone pays the same receiving address again, their wallet creates a different one-time destination. An outside observer cannot simply group those payments by looking for your shared address on the blockchain.
This happens automatically. You do not need to turn on a special privacy setting or create a fresh wallet for each payment.
How your wallet finds the money
Your receiving address contains two public keys. These are pieces of cryptographic information—information designed to work with secret keys while keeping those secrets hidden.
The sender’s wallet combines your public information with fresh transaction data to build the one-time destination. Your wallet then uses its secret keys to recognize and spend the payment:
- Private view key: Helps your wallet scan the blockchain and recognize payments meant for you.
- Private spend key: Gives your wallet the secret authority needed to spend your funds.
The blockchain records the one-time destination, not your ordinary receiving address. Your wallet can still detect the payment and show it in your balance.
A useful distinction: the stealth address is not another address you must copy, save, or send to someone. Your wallet handles it behind the scenes.
What a stealth address does—and does not—hide
Stealth addresses specifically protect the recipient’s link to a payment. They make it difficult for a blockchain observer to connect a recorded payment to your published receiving address.
They are only one part of Monero’s privacy system. Other mechanisms protect payment amounts and make it harder to determine which earlier funds are being spent. A stealth address alone does not do all of that.
It also does not erase information shared elsewhere:
- The sender already knows the address you gave them and can keep records of your payment.
- Publishing your address beside your name can connect that address to your identity, even though your incoming payments are not openly listed under it.
- Sharing your private view key can let someone recognize incoming payments.
- Malware or a stolen wallet recovery phrase can defeat protections that blockchain privacy cannot fix.
What this means for mining payments
If you receive a Monero mining payout, your wallet handles the one-time destination automatically. You give the mining service an appropriate receiving address—not your private keys or recovery phrase.
The service may still know your payout address, payment amounts, and account details. Stealth addresses protect the on-chain recipient link; they do not make the service forget its own records.
The bottom line
A Monero stealth address is an automatic, one-time payment destination that helps keep your receiving address separate from the public transaction record. You share your receiving address as usual, and your wallet does the private work of finding and spending your XMR.
