Withdraw without leaking
The cryptography of a stealth address holds. What breaks privacy is the next move. The five habits behind most traces, and what the client does about each.
In our mainnet scan of 25,645 stealth addresses, 38.97% of the 25,017 that were withdrawn were traced to their owner. Almost every trace came from a habit after the payment, not from a weakness in the math. The client makes the safe path the default one.
The five habits
| Leak | What gives you away | In our data | Default in ephemeral |
|---|---|---|---|
| H1 registrant reuse | Withdrawing to the address that registered your stealth keys | 9,709 traced single withdrawals | That address is never offered as a destination. Typing it in shows a hard warning. |
| H2 round trip | Sending funds back to the address that paid you | 426 traced single withdrawals | A warning before signing when the destination is the payer. |
| H3 collector | Sweeping many stealth addresses into one wallet | 45.68% of single withdrawals, in 3,786 clusters | No sweep-all button. Each payment moves on its own path, at its own time. |
| H4 fee fingerprint | A custom priority fee that repeats across withdrawals | 1,024 transactions in 463 groups | Fees follow the network's standard values. |
| H5 gas funding | Sending ETH from your main wallet so a token-only stealth address can pay gas | 0 of the 2 token-only addresses that paid their own gas | Never funded from a linked wallet. Sponsored gas is on the roadmap. |
H1 and H2 name you directly. H3 and H4 do not name anyone, but they group your payments together, so one mistake anywhere links all of them.
What still links payments
No default makes you invisible. These are on you:
- Timing. A stealth address that receives funds and moves them a minute later is easy to pair with the payment. Wait.
- Amounts. 1.2345 ETH in and 1.2345 ETH out is a fingerprint. Split and round where you can.
- Destinations you reuse. If every payment ends up in the same exchange account, the exchange can group them, and so can anyone it shares data with.
- Your own words. Posting a stealth address, or the transaction that paid it, undoes the work.
A safe withdrawal, step by step
Pick one payment. Move it on its own, not together with others.
Pick a destination that has never touched your public address. A fresh address, another stealth address, or a shielded pool.
Let the client set the fee. Do not set a custom priority fee.
Wait, and avoid exact amounts. The longer and less exact, the weaker any timing or amount link.
Gas
A stealth address that received only a token has no ETH to pay gas. Funding it from your main wallet is H5. Until sponsored gas ships, the client tells you which payments need gas and never offers to fund them from a linked wallet. Options today: receive a little ETH to the same stealth address as part of the payment, or move the token through a relayer the sender or a third party pays for.