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What are change addresses?
What are change addresses?

A change address is the address leftover change is sent to after a transaction. Everything you need to know about change addresses.

Updated over a week ago

Learn about change addresses in cryptocurrency transactions and how generating new change addresses can enhance privacy.

Need a crypto wallet that gives you full control of your assets? You can download Exodus here.


In this article:


What are change addresses?

A change address is the address that receives leftover crypto, i.e. change, from a transaction. Change addresses are an essential feature of UTXO-based assets like Bitcoin.

With UTXO-based assets, funds are sent and received as UTXOs. Sometimes the unspent portion of a UTXO is sent to a newly generated change address to enhance privacy.

However, it is not possible to partially spend received UTXOs. It's only possible to spend the full UTXO.

If your unspent UTXO(s) does not amount to exactly the same amount you want to send, then your wallet takes the UTXO(s) you are sending, and it creates 2 UTXO outputs. One UTXO is sent to the receiver, and the leftover change is returned to your wallet by creating another UTXO that is sent to an address owned by your wallet.

The address the leftover change is sent to is referred to as the change address.

This works similarly to the change you get when paying with cash. For example, say you have a 5-dollar bill and want to buy something that costs $3. You can't rip the 5-dollar bill into smaller pieces. Instead, you give away the 5-dollar bill and get a 2-dollar bill back.


Why does generating a new change address enhance privacy?

Generating a new change address each time you send funds can enhance privacy because when sending the leftover change to a newly generated change address, the sending address and the change address will not match.

Because the sending address and change address don't match, If someone looks at that transaction on the blockchain, it would be more difficult for them to tell if one of the outputs was a change address owned by the sender.


On the other hand, if the sending address and change address are the same, if someone were looking at the transaction, it would be easier for them to figure out which output is the change address since the change address matches the sending address.


How do change addresses work in Exodus?

Exodus automatically manages and creates change addresses to return your leftover change when transacting with UTXO-based assets.

Generating a new change address when sending funds is only supported for some assets in Exodus Mobile and Desktop.

Exodus Mobile only supports generating new change addresses for Bitcoin when multiple addresses are enabled. To learn how to enable multiple addresses for Bitcoin, visit: How do I create a new Bitcoin address?

For other UTXO assets, the same change address is always used.

Exodus Desktop supports generating new change addresses for Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Dash (DASH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Decred (DCR), Litecoin (LTC), Qtum (QTUM), Ravencoin (RVN), and Zcash (ZEC).

If you want to view all your addresses for UTXO-based assets, you can export your extended public key. For more information, visit: How do I export my xpub or zpub?


What does a change address look like?

Let's look at a UTXO-based transaction on a block explorer.

In addition to the address to which you sent funds, you will also see another address. This is the change address that receives any leftover crypto returned to your wallet.

If a new change address is generated, the change address will not be the same as the sending address.

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