Are Addresses Recorded on the Blockchain?

Addressing Mimblewimble

Mimblewimble has several key features that distinguishes itself from all other existing cryptocurrencies but are critical to understanding how Beam functions.

In the crypto-sphere, address are a set of private and public hashed keys that are used to identify different wallets, and unlock funds. Bob sends 5 BTC to Alices address (public key) and Alice uses her private key thats tied to the unspent transaction output (UTXO). As soon as Bob sends Alice the BTC to her public address, that transaction is recorded and added to blockchain.

In Mimblewimble there are no addresses and each transaction is created simultaneously involving both parties of the transaction. That means both Alice and Bob have to create and co-sign each transaction before broadcasting it to the blockchain.

Filling the Mimblewimble Gap

In the Beam LelantusMW protocol, SBBS addresses which act a set of private/public keys would allow Alice and Bob to send transactions to each other that could only be encrypted or decrypted by the SBBS, and Alice and Bob would not need to be online to complete the transaction