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Stressing Out: Bitcoin “Stress Testing” Read chapter Read first chapter

2016 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Blindly Signed Contracts: Anonymous On-Blockchain and Off-Blockchain Bitcoin Transactions

Authors : Ethan Heilman, Foteini Baldimtsi, Sharon Goldberg

Published in: Financial Cryptography and Data Security

Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

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Abstract

Although Bitcoin is often perceived to be an anonymous currency, research has shown that a user’s Bitcoin transactions can be linked to compromise the user’s anonymity. We present solutions to the anonymity problem for both transactions on Bitcoin’s blockchain and off the blockchain (in so called micropayment channel networks). We use an untrusted third party to issue anonymous vouchers which users redeem for Bitcoin. Blind signatures and Bitcoin transaction contracts (aka smart contracts) ensure the anonymity and fairness during the bitcoin \(\leftrightarrow \) voucher exchange. Our schemes are practical, secure and anonymous.

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previous chapter Automated Verification of Electrum Wallet
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Footnotes
1
Our off-blockchain scheme is fast because it uses micropayment channel networks. It’s unclear how to retrofit prior work onto these networks, e.g., mapping Coinshuffle’s single atomic transaction onto the arbitrary graph topology of a micropayment channel network.
 
2
We assume that all transactions in our schemes are of 1 bitcoin value.
 
3
We could allow users to perform multiple payments (by using multiple Bitcoin addresses that belong to them) but this would reduce their anonymity and make our analysis more complex.
 
4
\(\mathcal {I}\) signs \( T _f\) to stop a malicious miner that learns \(\overline{\sigma }\) from stealing the bitcoin \(\mathcal {A}\) gives \(\mathcal {I}\).
 
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Metadata
Title
Blindly Signed Contracts: Anonymous On-Blockchain and Off-Blockchain Bitcoin Transactions
Authors
Ethan Heilman
Foteini Baldimtsi
Sharon Goldberg
Copyright Year
2016
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Book
Financial Cryptography and Data Security

Print ISBN: 978-3-662-53356-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-662-53357-4

Copyright Year: 2016

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53357-4_4

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