Neptune Core 0.11.0 introduces two new address formats — viewing addresses and EC hybrid addresses — that are significantly shorter and easier to work with than the existing generation addresses.
Full changelog & download on GitHub →
Shorter addresses
The new formats are much shorter than the existing generation addresses, and they also produce much shorter on-chain announcements when funds are sent to them.
The new address prefixes are:
nviewfor viewing addressesnechfor EC hybrid addresses
For comparison, a generation address is 3482 Bech32 characters. A viewing address is 115 characters, and an EC hybrid address is 168 characters.
This makes addresses easier to share, display, and integrate into wallets and other tools.
Privacy considerations
Shorter does not automatically mean “safer in every way.”
A viewing address works somewhat like a view key: anyone who has it can see UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs) sent to that address when on-chain announcements are used. In practice, this means that if a viewing address is shared publicly or leaks, anyone can look at the blockchain and see which transactions sent money to that address and how much — they cannot spend the funds, but they can track your incoming balance.
EC hybrid addresses add an elliptic-curve key-exchange mechanism, giving better privacy properties while keeping addresses compact.
The older symmetric address format is being deprecated because it is easy to use incorrectly. It remains functional for now, but migrating to one of the new formats is recommended.
For more background, read the forum post: Two new address formats
Other improvements
The release also includes fixes and internal improvements around address handling, archival state recovery, sync-mode testing, and test coverage for the new address types.
What you should do
Update your node to v0.11.0. If you share addresses publicly or with third parties, consider which format fits your needs: EC hybrid addresses offer the best balance of compactness and privacy, while generation addresses remain the strongest privacy option if that is your priority.