Monero subaddresses explained: one wallet, many addresses
Instead of handing out one address to everyone, a Monero wallet can derive a fresh address for each sender. Same balance, same seed — much better payment hygiene.
What a subaddress is
A Monero wallet can derive an unlimited number of subaddresses from the same seed. Each one looks like a normal address (mainnet subaddresses start with 8) and each one lands coins in the same wallet, same balance. Nothing extra to back up: restore the seed and every subaddress you ever used comes back with it.
Why you would use one
Payment hygiene
Hand out one address per customer, invoice or purpose. When a payment arrives you know exactly who sent it without keeping a separate ledger, and the sender never sees an address used by anyone else.
Linking resistance
On a public ledger two payments to the same address are trivially linkable. With a fresh subaddress per counterparty, even an observer who learns one of your addresses cannot tie it to your other activity. Combined with Monero's default privacy (see Monero vs Bitcoin), subaddresses close the “same destination” leak that still exists at the address level.
Accounting
Freelancers and small shops often use one subaddress per client. Balances still pool in one wallet, but deposits are self-labelling.
How subaddresses are derived
Every subaddress is a pair of public keys derived from your private view key and an index: the wallet hashes the view key with the account and address index, then combines the result with your spend and view keys. That is why:
- you need the same seed to see them again — no separate records;
- an index can be re-created on restore, so old subaddresses keep working;
- an outside observer cannot tell a subaddress belongs to you unless you reveal your view key or spend from it.
What a subaddress is not
It is not a separate wallet: you cannot have “one balance per subaddress” in the wallet UI, and you cannot send from a specific subaddress without extra tooling. If you need fully independent balances, create separate wallets instead — for example several wallets in the browser wallet.
Practical tips
- Print or bookmark a small table of the subaddresses you handed out — the wallet index is what maps them to people.
- Do not reuse the primary address for everything “because it is simpler”; that is exactly the pattern subaddresses exist to avoid.
- Subaddresses work everywhere normal addresses do: exchanges, shops and other Monero wallets accept an 8-prefixed address.
- If a service insists on a long payment ID, it is running old software — a subaddress is the modern answer.
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