TY - GEN
T1 - Resurrecting Address Clustering in Bitcoin
AU - Möser, Malte
AU - Narayanan, Arvind
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, International Financial Cryptography Association.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Blockchain analysis is essential for understanding how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are used in practice, and address clustering is a cornerstone of blockchain analysis. However, current techniques rely on heuristics that have not been rigorously evaluated or optimized. In this paper, we tackle several challenges of change address identification and clustering. First, we build a ground truth set of transactions with known change from the Bitcoin blockchain that can be used to validate the efficacy of individual change address detection heuristics. Equipped with this data set, we develop new techniques to predict change outputs with low false positive rates. After applying our prediction model to the Bitcoin blockchain, we analyze the resulting clustering and develop ways to detect and prevent cluster collapse. Finally, we assess the impact our enhanced clustering has on two exemplary applications.
AB - Blockchain analysis is essential for understanding how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are used in practice, and address clustering is a cornerstone of blockchain analysis. However, current techniques rely on heuristics that have not been rigorously evaluated or optimized. In this paper, we tackle several challenges of change address identification and clustering. First, we build a ground truth set of transactions with known change from the Bitcoin blockchain that can be used to validate the efficacy of individual change address detection heuristics. Equipped with this data set, we develop new techniques to predict change outputs with low false positive rates. After applying our prediction model to the Bitcoin blockchain, we analyze the resulting clustering and develop ways to detect and prevent cluster collapse. Finally, we assess the impact our enhanced clustering has on two exemplary applications.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85142681092&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85142681092&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-18283-9_19
DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-18283-9_19
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85142681092
SN - 9783031182822
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 386
EP - 403
BT - Financial Cryptography and Data Security - 26th International Conference, FC 2022, Revised Selected Papers
A2 - Eyal, Ittay
A2 - Garay, Juan
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
T2 - 26th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2022
Y2 - 2 May 2022 through 6 May 2022
ER -