Research on Anonymization and De-anonymization in the Bitcoin System

TL;DR

This paper reviews techniques for anonymizing and de-anonymizing Bitcoin transactions, analyzing current methods and proposing future research directions in transaction analysis and protocol security.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of existing anonymization and deanonymization techniques in Bitcoin and suggests new research directions.

Findings

De-anonymization techniques can effectively cluster Bitcoin addresses.

Anonymization methods like coin-mixing help protect user privacy.

Future research should focus on improving privacy and security in Bitcoin.

Abstract

The Bitcoin system is an anonymous, decentralized crypto-currency. There are some deanonymizating techniques to cluster Bitcoin addresses and to map them to users' identifications in the two research directions of Analysis of Transaction Chain (ATC) and Analysis of Bitcoin Protocol and Network (ABPN). Nowadays, there are also some anonymization methods such as coin-mixing and transaction remote release (TRR) to cover the relationship between Bitcoin address and the user. This paper studies anonymization and de-anonymization technologies and proposes some directions for further research.