Paper Number
1780
Paper Type
Completed
Description
The role played by decentralised services in the obfuscation of crypto-asset transactions performed on transparent blockchains has increasingly captured the attention of regulators. This is exemplified by the headlines about the U.S. Treasury's sanctions on the Ethereum-based mixer Tornado Cash. Yet, despite the existing controversies on the use of mixers, the different functionalities of these information systems with an inherent dark side remain to be explored by the literature. So far, contributions primarily encompass technical works and studies that focus on the Bitcoin ecosystem. This paper puts forward a multi-layer taxonomy of the smart-contract-based - and, therefore, functionally richer - family of mixers on Ethereum. Our proposed taxonomy is grounded on (1) a review of existing literature, (2) an analysis of mixers' project documentation, (3) their corresponding smart contracts, and (4) expert interviews. The evaluation included the application of the taxonomy to two mixers - RAILGUN and zkBob. Our taxonomy represents a valuable tool for law enforcement, regulators, and other stakeholders to explore critical properties affecting compliance and use of Ethereum-based mixers.
Recommended Citation
Barbereau, Tom; Ermolaev, Egor; Brennecke, Martin; Hartwich, Eduard; and Sedlmeir, Johannes, "Beyond a Fistful of Tumblers: Toward a Taxonomy of Ethereum-based Mixers" (2023). ICIS 2023 Proceedings. 13.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2023/cyber_security/cyber_security/13
Beyond a Fistful of Tumblers: Toward a Taxonomy of Ethereum-based Mixers
The role played by decentralised services in the obfuscation of crypto-asset transactions performed on transparent blockchains has increasingly captured the attention of regulators. This is exemplified by the headlines about the U.S. Treasury's sanctions on the Ethereum-based mixer Tornado Cash. Yet, despite the existing controversies on the use of mixers, the different functionalities of these information systems with an inherent dark side remain to be explored by the literature. So far, contributions primarily encompass technical works and studies that focus on the Bitcoin ecosystem. This paper puts forward a multi-layer taxonomy of the smart-contract-based - and, therefore, functionally richer - family of mixers on Ethereum. Our proposed taxonomy is grounded on (1) a review of existing literature, (2) an analysis of mixers' project documentation, (3) their corresponding smart contracts, and (4) expert interviews. The evaluation included the application of the taxonomy to two mixers - RAILGUN and zkBob. Our taxonomy represents a valuable tool for law enforcement, regulators, and other stakeholders to explore critical properties affecting compliance and use of Ethereum-based mixers.
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Comments
06-Security