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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2024.15

Privacy Comparison for Bitcoin Light Client Implementations

Authors: Arad Kotzer and Ori Rottenstreich

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 316, 6th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2024)

Abstract

Light clients implement a simple solution for Bitcoin’s scalability problem, as they do not store the entire blockchain but only the state of particular addresses of interest. To be able to keep track of the updated state of their addresses, light clients rely on full nodes to provide them with the required information. To do so, they must reveal information about the addresses they are interested in. This paper studies the two most common light client implementations, SPV and Neutrino with regards to their privacy. We define privacy metrics for comparing the privacy of the different implementations. We evaluate and compare the privacy of the implementations over time on real Bitcoin data and discuss the inherent privacy-communication tradeoff. In addition, we propose general techniques to enhance light client privacy in the existing implementations. Finally, we propose a new SPV-based light client model, the aggregation model, evaluate it, and show it can achieve enhanced privacy than in the existing light client implementations.

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Arad Kotzer and Ori Rottenstreich. Privacy Comparison for Bitcoin Light Client Implementations. In 6th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 316, pp. 15:1-15:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{kotzer_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2024.15,
  author =	{Kotzer, Arad and Rottenstreich, Ori},
  title =	{{Privacy Comparison for Bitcoin Light Client Implementations}},
  booktitle =	{6th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2024)},
  pages =	{15:1--15:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-345-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{316},
  editor =	{B\"{o}hme, Rainer and Kiffer, Lucianna},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2024.15},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-209510},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2024.15},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, Privacy, Light Clients, Bloom filter}
}

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Privacy Comparison for Bitcoin Light Client Implementations

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