What is address reuse?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 4 min
In short
Address reuse means accepting payment to the same address again and again. Everyone who knows that address can then read your balance and your full payment history. Using a fresh address per payment is a basic way to avoid broadcasting how much you hold.
Key points
- Anyone you gave it to keeps seeing your balance forever
- Separate counterparties can match you up as the same person
- Most wallets already hand out a fresh address per payment
- An address you have published cannot be taken back
Definition
Using one receiving address across many payments. Every transfer touching it is publicly grouped under a single actor, which makes the holder's balance and counterparties easy to infer.
Type an address into a block explorer and you get its balance and every payment it has ever made or received. That is ordinary public data, free to anyone. Hand out an address and you have handed out a permanent window onto your balance.
Reuse gets worse when the same address goes to different people. If two of them compare notes, they learn they were paying the same party. An address used for an invoice, a repayment from a friend and a marketplace sale ties all three together on one line.
Most modern wallets show a new address every time you open the receive screen. They can derive endless addresses from one seed phrase, so extra addresses never mean extra backups. Simply using whatever address the wallet offers is the easiest protection there is.
Watch out for
- · A fixed address in a profile or an invoice exposes your balance indefinitely
- · Switching addresses does not erase the history already published
- · Exchange deposit addresses are often static and poorly suited to sharing with others