PathShuffle: Credit Mixing and Anonymous Payments for Ripple

• Main Authors: Moreno-Sanchez Pedro, Ruffing Tim, Kate Aniket
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2017-07-01
• Series: Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies
• Subjects: ripple; stellar; ioweyou settlements; credit networks; privacy; p2p mixing
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/popets-2017-0031

The I owe you (IOU) credit network Ripple is one of the most prominent alternatives in the burgeoning field of decentralized payment systems. Ripple’s path-based transactions set it apart from cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Its pseudonymous nature, while still maintaining some regulatory capabilities, has motivated several financial institutions across the world to use Ripple for processing their daily transactions. Nevertheless, with its public ledger, a credit network such as Ripple is no different from a cryptocurrency in terms of weak privacy; recent demonstrative deanonymization attacks raise important concerns regarding the privacy of the Ripple users and their transactions. However, unlike for cryptocurrencies, there is no known privacy solution compatible with the existing credit networks such as Ripple.