Watch-only balance of a baby's wallet
The words that spend a baby's wallet should stay on paper for 18 years. Seeing what it holds does not need them: every balance on a public blockchain can be read from the address alone.
Addresses are public, words are not
An address is where coins are sent; it is printed on the gift card and shared with relatives. Anyone can look it up. The 24 words are what can move the coins. A watch-only view uses the first and never touches the second, so checking on a gift is never a reason to take the words out.
How the balance page here works
When you make a wallet on address.baby, or press Watch on a gift link, this browser keeps the baby's name and three addresses. The balance page shows them, and when you press Check balances it asks one public server per chain:
- Bitcoin — mempool.space's public API, for confirmed and still-waiting amounts;
- Ethereum —
eth_getBalanceon ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com, for ETH; - Solana —
getBalanceon api.mainnet-beta.solana.com, for SOL.
Amounts are shown in the coin's own unit, with no price. That page is the only one on the site allowed to connect anywhere, and its security policy lets it reach those three servers and nothing else.
What the servers learn
Each server sees the address you asked about and the IP address you asked from. It never sees the words, and it could not spend with what it sees. But it can link the address to your connection, and over the years to your other look-ups. If that matters to you, check from a VPN or Tor, or use one of the options below.
Tokens are not in the total
The Ethereum address also receives tokens such as USDC, and the Solana address receives SPL tokens. The balance page counts ETH and SOL only. To see tokens, paste the address into a block explorer such as Etherscan or Solscan, or add it as a watch-only account in a wallet app.
Other ways to watch
- A wallet app with watch-only accounts. BlueWallet and Electrum can watch a single Bitcoin address; several Ethereum and Solana wallets can add an address as a read-only account.
- A block explorer bookmark. Simple, and the explorer learns the same as the servers above.
- Your own node. The private option: a wallet such as Sparrow connected to a Bitcoin node of your own asks nobody else.
One address per chain
Every gift goes to the same address on each chain, so anyone who knows it can see the total and every gift. For a family gift wallet that is usually a fair price for simplicity. If privacy matters more, restore the words in a full wallet app, which hands out a fresh address for each gift.