Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Accountable Privacy for Decentralized Anonymous Payments

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 9603))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Decentralized ledger-based currencies such as Bitcoin provide a means to construct payment systems without requiring a trusted bank. Removing this trust assumption comes at the significant cost of transaction privacy. A number of academic works have sought to improve the privacy offered by ledger-based currencies using anonymous electronic cash (e-cash) techniques. Unfortunately, this strong degree of privacy creates new regulatory concerns, since the new private transactions cannot be subject to the same controls used to prevent individuals from conducting illegal transactions such as money laundering. We propose an initial approach to addressing this issue by adding privacy preserving policy-enforcement mechanisms that guarantee regulatory compliance, allow selective user tracing, and admit tracing of tainted coins (e.g., ransom payments). To accomplish this new functionality we also provide improved definitions for Zerocash and, of independent interest, an efficient construction for simulation sound zk-SNARKs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    We note that this tax policy is ill defined if users collude to generate a transaction using MPC where the input identities are different. This can be fixed by ensuring that there is only one identity used for all input coins. However, the same MPC mechanism could be used to share one identity and never pay taxes.

  2. 2.

    It may be possible to reduce the cost of these proofs by introducing zero-knowledge proofs that are only partially extractable, although this technique is not described by the Hawk authors. For example, the exact Merkle tree path need not be extracted from the zkSNARK proof.

References

  1. Barber, S., Boyen, X., Shi, E., Uzun, E.: Bitter to better — how to make bitcoin a better currency. In: Keromytis, A.D. (ed.) FC 2012. LNCS, vol. 7397, pp. 399–414. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-32946-3_29

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Ben-Sasson, E., Chiesa, A., Garman, C., Green, M., Miers, I., Tromer, E., Virza, M.: Zerocash: decentralized anonymous payments from Bitcoin. In: 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), pp. 459–474. IEEE (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Ben-Sasson, E., Chiesa, A., Genkin, D., Tromer, E., Virza, M.: SNARKs for C: verifying program executions succinctly and in zero knowledge. In: Canetti, R., Garay, J.A. (eds.) CRYPTO 2013. LNCS, vol. 8043, pp. 90–108. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-40084-1_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Ben-Sasson, E., Chiesa, A., Tromer, E., Virza, M.: Succinct non-interactive zero knowledge for a von Neumann architecture. In: Proceedings of the 23rd USENIX Security Symposium, Security 2014 (2014). http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/879

  5. Biryukov, A., Khovratovich, D., Pustogarov, I.: Deanonymisation of clients in Bitcoin P2P network. In: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, pp. 15–29. ACM (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bitansky, N., Chiesa, A., Ishai, Y., Paneth, O., Ostrovsky, R.: Succinct non-interactive arguments via linear interactive proofs. In: Sahai, A. (ed.) TCC 2013. LNCS, vol. 7785, pp. 315–33. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-36594-2_18

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Camenisch, J., Hohenberger, S., Lysyanskaya, A.: Balancing accountability and privacy using e-cash (extended abstract). In: Prisco, R., Yung, M. (eds.) SCN 2006. LNCS, vol. 4116, pp. 141–55. Springer, Heidelberg (2006). doi:10.1007/11832072_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Canetti, R.: Universally composable security: a new paradigm for cryptographic protocols. In: FOCS 2001, p. 136. IEEE Computer Society (2001). http://eprint.iacr.org/2000/067

  9. Danezis, G., Fournet, C., Kohlweiss, M., Parno, B.: Pinocchio coin: building Zerocoin from a succinct pairing-based proof system. In: Proceedings of the First ACM Workshop on Language Support for Privacy-enhancing Technologies, pp. 27–30. ACM (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Garman, C., Green, M., Miers, I.: Accountable privacy for decentralized anonymous payments. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2016/061 (2016). http://eprint.iacr.org

  11. Gennaro, R., Gentry, C., Parno, B., Raykova, M.: Quadratic span programs and succinct NIZKs without PCPs. In: Johansson, T., Nguyen, P.Q. (eds.) EUROCRYPT 2013. LNCS, vol. 7881, pp. 626–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-38348-9_37

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Goldreich, O.: Foundations of Cryptography: Volume 2, Basic Applications. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2004)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Groth, J.: Short pairing-based non-interactive zero-knowledge arguments. In: Abe, M. (ed.) ASIACRYPT 2010. LNCS, vol. 6477, pp. 321–40. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-17373-8_19

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Kohlweiss, M., Miers, I.: Accountable tracing signatures. Cryptology ePrint Archive, Report 2014/824 (2014). http://eprint.iacr.org/

  15. Kosba, A., Miller, A., Shi, E., Wen, Z., Papamanthou, C.: Hawk: the blockchain model of cryptography and privacy-preserving smart contracts (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kügler, D., Vogt, H.: Auditable tracing with unconditional anonymity. In: International Workshop on Information Security Application - WISA 2001, pp. 151–163 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kügler, D., Vogt, H.: Offline payments with auditable tracing. In: Blaze, M. (ed.) FC 2002. LNCS, vol. 2357, pp. 269–81. Springer, Heidelberg (2003). doi:10.1007/3-540-36504-4_19

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Lipmaa, H.: Progression-free sets and sublinear pairing-based non-interactive zero-knowledge arguments. In: Cramer, R. (ed.) TCC 2012. LNCS, vol. 7194, pp. 169–189. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-28914-9_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Lipmaa, H.: Succinct non-interactive zero knowledge arguments from span programs and linear error-correcting codes. In: Sako, K., Sarkar, P. (eds.) ASIACRYPT 2013. LNCS, vol. 8269, pp. 41–60. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-42033-7_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Miers, I., Garman, C., Green, M., Rubin, A.D.: Zerocoin: anonymous distributed e-cash from Bitcoin. In: 2013 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), pp. 397–411. IEEE (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Parno, B., Gentry, C., Howell, J., Raykova, M.: Pinocchio: nearly practical verifiable computation. In: Proceedings of the 34th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Oakland, pp. 238–252 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Reid, F., Martin, H.: An analysis of anonymity in the Bitcoin system. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust and on Social Computing, SocialCom/PASSAT 2011, pp. 1318–1326 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by: The National Science Foundation under awards EFRI-1441209 and CNS-1414023; Google ATAP; The Mozilla Foundation; and the Office of Naval Research under contract N00014-14-1-0333.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

    Christina Garman, Matthew Green & Ian Miers

Authors
  1. Christina Garman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Matthew Green
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ian Miers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christina Garman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University Munich, Garching, Germany

    Jens Grossklags

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering-ESAT, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Bart Preneel

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 International Financial Cryptography Association

About this paper

Cite this paper

Garman, C., Green, M., Miers, I. (2017). Accountable Privacy for Decentralized Anonymous Payments. In: Grossklags, J., Preneel, B. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9603. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54970-4_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54970-4_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-54969-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-54970-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation