Authors:
Nicolas T. Courtois
1
and
Rebekah Mercer
2
Affiliations:
1
University College London, United Kingdom
;
2
University College London and Clearmatics Technologies Ltd, United Kingdom
Keyword(s):
Applied Cryptography, Bitcoin, DarkWallet, CryptoNote, ShadowCash, Key Management, Privacy, Anonymous Payment, Stealth Address Technique, Audit Capability, ECDSA, HD Wallets, BIP032, Leakage-resistant Cryptography.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer-Supported Education
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information and Systems Security
;
Information Assurance
;
Information Hiding
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Information Technologies Supporting Learning
;
Privacy Enhancing Technologies
;
Security
;
Security and Privacy
Abstract:
Bitcoin is an open source payment system with a market capitalization of about 15 G$. During the years
several key management solutions have been proposed to enhance bitcoin. The common characteristic of
these techniques is that they allow to derive public keys independently of the private keys, and that these keys
match. In this paper we overview the historical development of such techniques, specify and compare all
major variants proposed or used in practical systems. We show that such techniques can be designed based on
2 distinct ECC arithmetic properties and how to combine both. A major trend in blockchain systems is to use
by Stealth Address (SA) techniques to make different payments made to the same payee unlikable. We review
all known SA techniques and show that early variants are less secure. Finally we propose a new SA method
which is more robust against leakage and against various attacks.