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Wallet Address Sharing

The most common crypto user-to-user interaction is “send me your address”. It is also one of the most dangerous: a single swapped character routes funds irreversibly into the wrong place, and attackers exploit this by MITM’ing chat clients, spoofing identities, and poisoning clipboards. Notareum replaces raw address exchange with signed, verifiable .nota files and on-chain registry lookups.

The problem today

Alice wants to pay Bob. She asks Bob for his address over chat. Bob pastes 0xabc...def. Alice copies it, possibly through a compromised extension or clipboard manager, and sends funds. If anything corrupted the address along the way, the funds are gone. Attack surfaces include:
  • Clipboard poisoning by malicious browser extensions or installed malware.
  • Visually similar addresses generated by vanity miners sharing a prefix and suffix.
  • Impersonation of Bob by an attacker who has compromised Bob’s chat account.
  • Typo-squatted ENS names or paid copycats.

The Notareum flow

Alice’s wallet no longer trusts the chat app or the clipboard. It trusts the signature on the .nota file and the on-chain record.

End-to-end code

Bob: produce a signed .nota for his address

Alice: consume a received .nota or alias

Alice’s wallet uses this resolver on the confirm screen, showing Bob’s name, verification badge, alias, and any warnings. If any check fails (signature mismatch, revoked record, unknown alias), the wallet blocks the send.

Why this is better than ENS alone

  • ENS resolves names to addresses but does not carry issuer identity or a verification level signal.
  • ENS does not have a protocol-level revocation flag with governance-set consequences.
  • .nota files can travel off-chain (no transaction needed for a one-off share), while still being verifiable the moment the recipient gets a provider.
  • Notareum’s on-chain registry and ENS can coexist: you can still register your ENS name as the alias.