Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin

Bit coin is the first digital currency to see widespread adoption. While payments are conducted between pseudonyms, Bit coin cannot offer strong privacy guarantees: payment transactions are recorded in a public decentralized ledger, from which much information can be deduced. Zero coin (Miers et al., IEEE S&P 2013) tackles some of these privacy issues by unlinking transactions from the payment's origin. Yet, it still reveals payments' destinations and amounts, and is limited in functionality. In this paper, we construct a full-fledged ledger-based digital currency with strong privacy guarantees. Our results leverage recent advances in zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs).…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: CCF-0939370, FP7/2007-2013, 0939370
• UD
  U.S. Department of Defense
• SF
  Simons Foundation
• BF
  Broadcom Foundation
• TA
  Tel Aviv University
• DA
  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

  Awards: FA8750, FA8750-11-2-0211
• AR
  Advanced Research Projects Agency
• IC
  Israeli Centers for Research Excellence
• CP
  Check Point Institute for Information Security, Tel Aviv University
• OO
  Office of Naval Research

  Award: N00014
• AF
  Air Force Research Laboratory

  Award: FA8750-11-2-0211