[en] With the growth in popularity for cryptocurrencies the need for privacy preserving blockchains is growing as well. Zcash is such a blockchain, providing transaction privacy through zero-knowledge proofs. In this paper we analyze transaction linkability in Zcash based on the currency minting transactions (mining). Using predictable usage patterns and clustering heuristics on mining transactions an attacker can link to publicly visible addresses over 84% of the volume of the transactions that use a ZK-proof. Since majority of Zcash transactions are not yet using ZK-proofs, we show that overall 95.5% of the total number of Zcash transactions are potentially linkable to public addresses by just observing the mining activity.
Disciplines :
Sciences informatiques
Auteur, co-auteur :
BIRYUKOV, Alex ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Science, Technology and Communication (FSTC) > Computer Science and Communications Research Unit (CSC) ; University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT)
FEHER, Daniel ; University of Luxembourg > Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SNT) ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Science, Technology and Communication (FSTC) > Computer Science and Communications Research Unit (CSC)
Co-auteurs externes :
no
Langue du document :
Anglais
Titre :
Privacy and Linkability of Mining in Zcash
Date de publication/diffusion :
2019
Nom de la manifestation :
2019 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security
Lieu de la manifestation :
Washington D.C., Etats-Unis
Date de la manifestation :
from 10-06-2019 to 12-06-2019
Titre de l'ouvrage principal :
2019 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)
