Stealth addresses using nostr

The exploration of integrating nostr notifications with Silent Payments presents a nuanced approach to enhancing transactional communication without compromising on privacy or efficiency. The primary concern raised involves ensuring the reliability of transaction notifications in the absence of a global state, a characteristic feature of nostr. This could potentially lead to scenarios where a transaction notification is missed or lost due to various factors such as the selection of relays and the deletion of notes before they are seen by the intended recipient.

To address these challenges, several solutions are proposed. Firstly, establishing a prior agreement on which relays to use could enhance the visibility of broadcasted notes between parties. Additionally, the implementation of a confirmation message where the sender rebroadcasts the notification until an acknowledgment is received from the receiver could mitigate the risk of missed notifications, provided there is an overlap in the relay sets used by both parties. This method relies heavily on the assumption that both sender and receiver have some transactions in common or a way to ensure they are checking for transactions within a certain range of each other.

However, the stateless nature of nostr poses inherent risks, notably the inability of a receiver to ascertain receipt of a payment if the notification fails to reach them. This issue is compounded by potential threats such as the flooding of receivers with fake notifications and the accidental reuse of identifiers by senders, which could lead to confusion and inefficiencies. The suggestion of employing a deterministic nonce offers a theoretical solution, though its practical application within the nostr framework remains uncertain.

Despite these concerns, the proposition of utilizing nostr for transaction notifications holds considerable merit, particularly in reducing the scanning effort required compared to traditional Silent Payments. By leveraging nostr's capabilities, the process could become more streamlined, albeit with necessary fallback mechanisms like full chain scans to ensure no transactions are missed. This approach could effectively balance the need for privacy and efficiency, especially if recent advancements in nostr's handling of private messaging and metadata leakage are taken into consideration. The potential for reduced metadata leakage, paired with the strategic use of nostr notifications, could offer a promising direction for secure and efficient transaction notifications in the realm of Silent Payments.