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Anonymous Sidechains

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Data Privacy Management, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology (DPM 2021, CBT 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 13140))

Abstract

Sidechains allow two or more blockchains to communicate with each other by transferring coins (or other ledger assets) from one to the other. Their functionalities set sidechains as one of the most prominent solutions towards blockchain scalability and interoperability.

A number of sidechain constructions have already been proposed on the literature presenting ways to securely move assets between blockchains for different types of underlying consensus mechanisms (PoW and PoS). In this work we study the problem of sidechains in the anonymous setting by demonstrating how multiple anonymous blockchains can interact with each other. We present the first formal definition for an anonymous sidechain and provide a first construction for privacy-preserving Zerocash [5] cross-ledger transactions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To simplify notation we consider params an implicit input and we omit it.

  2. 2.

    Our definition is stated for the case of cross-chain transactions between two ledgers, but it can be generalized to multiple ledgers by employing pair-wise peggings.

  3. 3.

    This is a new algorithm introduced to allow cross-ledger transactions.

  4. 4.

    \(\rho \) denotes serial number randomness and r, s commitment randomness.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers for all their useful constructive comments and editorial suggestions. Foteini Baldimtsi is supported by NSF Grant CNS-01717067, by NSA Grant 204761 (under a CMU Subcontract No. 1990713-40018), by an IBM faculty award and by a Facebook faculty award.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, USA

    Foteini Baldimtsi & Xinyuan Zhang

  2. University of Maryland, College Park, USA

    Ian Miers

Authors
  1. Foteini Baldimtsi
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  2. Ian Miers
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Correspondence to Foteini Baldimtsi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France

    Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro

  2. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Jose Luis Muñoz-Tapia

  3. Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

    Guillermo Navarro-Arribas

  4. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Miguel Soriano

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Baldimtsi, F., Miers, I., Zhang, X. (2022). Anonymous Sidechains. In: Garcia-Alfaro, J., Muñoz-Tapia, J.L., Navarro-Arribas, G., Soriano, M. (eds) Data Privacy Management, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology. DPM CBT 2021 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13140. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93944-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93944-1_17

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