Change Address / Change Output
Transactions● Common
When a UTXO exceeds the payment amount, the excess (minus fee) is sent back to the sender as 'change'. Ideally sent to a fresh address in the wallet's internal chain. Poor change management is a major source of privacy leaks through change identification heuristics.
Technical Notes
Change heuristics: round payment amounts, address type mismatch, output reuse in future tx. Mitigation: use same address type for all outputs, avoid round numbers, coin control. BIP-44 uses separate derivation path for change (m/44'/0'/0'/1/n). Some wallets support changeless transactions when UTXO matches payment + fee.
Metadata
Visibility: Public
Created:1/3/2026by System