% RMS wrote: %The text does not mention GNU anywhere. This paper is an opportunity %to make people aware of GNU, but the current text fails to use the %opportunity. % %It should say that Taler is a GNU package. % %I suggest using the term "GNU Taler" in the title, once in the %abstract, and the first time the name is mentioned in the body text. %In the body text, it can have a footnote with more information %including a reference to http://gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html. % %At the top of page 3, where it says "a free software implementation", %it should add "(free as in freedom)", with a reference to %http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and %http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html. % %Would you please include these things in every article or posting? % % CG adds: % We SHOULD do this for the FINAL paper, not for the anon submission. \documentclass{llncs} %\usepackage[margin=1in,a4paper]{geometry} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \usepackage{palatino} \usepackage{xspace} \usepackage{microtype} \usepackage{tikz,eurosym} \usepackage{amsmath,amssymb} \usepackage{enumitem} \usetikzlibrary{shapes,arrows} \usetikzlibrary{positioning} \usetikzlibrary{calc} \usepackage{caption} \usepackage{subcaption} \usepackage{subfig} % Relate to: % http://fc14.ifca.ai/papers/fc14_submission_124.pdf % Terminology: % - SEPA-transfer -- avoid 'SEPA transaction' as we use % 'transaction' already when we talk about taxable % transfers of Taler coins and database 'transactions'. % - wallet = coins at customer % - reserve = currency entrusted to exchange waiting for withdrawal % - deposit = SEPA to exchange % - withdrawal = exchange to customer % - spending = customer to merchant % - redeeming = merchant to exchange (and then exchange SEPA to merchant) % - refreshing = customer-exchange-customer % - dirty coin = coin with exposed public key % - fresh coin = coin that was refreshed or is new % - denomination key = exchange's online key used to (blindly) sign coin % - message signing key = exchange's online key to sign exchange messages % - exchange master key = exchange's key used to sign other exchange keys % - owner = entity that knows coin private key % - transaction = coin ownership transfer that should be taxed % - sharing = coin copying that should not be taxed \title{Taler: Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Reserves} \begin{document} \mainmatter %\author{Florian Dold \and Sree Harsha Totakura \and Benedikt M\"uller \and Christian Grothoff} %\institute{The GNUnet Project} \maketitle \begin{abstract} This paper introduces Taler, a Chaum-style digital currency that enables anonymous payments while ensuring that entities that receive payments are auditable and thus taxable. In Taler, customers can never defraud anyone, merchants can only fail to deliver the merchandise to the customer, and payment service providers can be fully audited. All parties receive cryptographic evidence for all transactions; still, each party only receives the minimum information required to execute transactions. Enforcement of honest behavior is timely, and is at least as strict as with legacy credit card payment systems that do not provide for privacy. Taler allows fractional payments while maintaining unlinkability of transactions. We argue that Taler provides a secure digital currency for modern liberal societies as it is a flexible, libre and efficient protocol and adequately balances the state's need for monetary control with the citizen's needs for private economic activity. \end{abstract} \section{Introduction} The design of payment systems shapes economies and societies. Strong, developed nation states are evolving towards transparent payment systems, such as the MasterCard and VisaCard credit card schemes and computerized bank transactions such as SWIFT. These systems enable mass surveillance by both governments and private companies. Aspects of this government control benefit the economy, by enabling taxation (also called anti-money laundering). As a result, bribery and corruption are limited to elites who can afford to escape the dragnet. At the other extreme, weaker developing nation states have economic activity based largely on coins, paper money or even barter. Here, the state is often unable to effectively monitor or tax economic activity, and this limits the ability of the state to shape the society. As bribery is virtually impossible to detect, corruption is widespread and not limited to social elites. % ZeroCoin~\cite{miers2013zerocoin} is an example for translating an anarchistic economy into the digital realm. % FIXME: Unclear referee comment : % I didn’t understand why ZeroCoin is particularly suited for % developing nations? % => clarified: suited to model anarchistic economy. This paper describes Taler, a simple and practical payment system for a modern social-liberal society, which is not being served well by current payment systems which enable either an authoritarian state in total control of the population, or create weak states with almost anarchistic economies. The Taler protocol is influenced by ideas from Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind} and also follows Chaum's basic architecture of customer, merchant and exchange (Figure~\ref{fig:cmm}). The two designs share the key first step where the {\em customer} withdraws digital {\em coins} from the {\em exchange} with unlinkability provided via blind signatures. The coins can then be spent at a {\em merchant} who {\em deposits} them at the exchange. Taler uses online detection of double-spending, thus assuring the merchant instantly that a transaction is valid. \begin{figure}[h] \centering \begin{tikzpicture} \tikzstyle{def} = [node distance= 5em and 7em, inner sep=1em, outer sep=.3em]; \node (origin) at (0,0) {}; \node (exchange) [def,above=of origin,draw]{Exchange}; \node (customer) [def, draw, below left=of origin] {Customer}; \node (merchant) [def, draw, below right=of origin] {Merchant}; \node (auditor) [def, draw, above right=of origin]{Auditor}; \tikzstyle{C} = [color=black, line width=1pt] \draw [<-, C] (customer) -- (exchange) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {withdraw coins}; \draw [<-, C] (exchange) -- (merchant) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {deposit coins}; \draw [<-, C] (merchant) -- (customer) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {spend coins}; \draw [<-, C] (exchange) -- (auditor) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {verify}; \end{tikzpicture} \caption{Taler's system model for the payment system is based on Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind}.} \label{fig:cmm} \end{figure} A key issue for an efficient Chaumian digital payment system is the need to provide change. For example, a customer may want to pay \EUR{49,99}, but has withdrawn a \EUR{100,00} coin. Withdrawng 10,000 pieces with a denomination of \EUR{0,01} and transferring 4,999 would be too inefficient, even for modern systems. The customer should not withdraw exact change from her account, as doing so reduces anonymity due to the obvious corrolation. A practical payment system must thus support giving change in the form of spendable coins, say a \EUR{0,01} coin and a \EUR{50,00} coin. Taler solves the problem of giving change by introducing a new {\em refresh} protocol. Using this protocol, a customer can obtain change in the form of fresh coins that other parties cannot link to the original transaction, the original coin, or each other. Additionally, the refresh protocol ensures that the change is owned by the same entity which owned the original coin. \section{Related Work} \subsection{Blockchain-based currencies} In recent years, a class of decentralized electronic payment systems, based on collectively recorded and verified append-only public ledgers, have gained immense popularity. The most well-known protocol in this class is Bitcoin~\cite{nakamoto2008bitcoin}. An initial concern with Bitcoin was the lack of anonymity, as all Bitcoin transactions are recorded for eternity, which can enable identification of users. In theory, this concern has been addressed with the Zerocoin extension to the protocol~\cite{miers2013zerocoin}. These protocols dispense with the need for a central, trusted authority, while providing a useful measure of pseudonymity. Yet, there are several major irredeemable problems inherent in their designs: \begin{itemize} \item The computational puzzles solved by Bitcoin nodes with the purpose of securing the block chain consume a considerable amount of energy. So Bitcoin is an environmentally irresponsible design. \item Bitcoin transactions have pseduononymous recipients, making taxation hard to systematically enforce. The Zerocoin extension makes this worse. % FIXME: need refs for following claim: \item Bitcoin seemingly requires speculation to offset the mining cost, creating fluctuations in value, and making it hard to bind to national currencies. These fluctuations may be desirable in a high-risk investment instrument, but they make Bitcoin unsuitable as a medium of exchange. \item Anyone can start an alternative Bitcoin transaction chain, called an AltCoin, and, if successful, reap the benefits of the low cost to initially create coins cheaply as the proof-of-work difficulty adjusts to the computation power of all miners in the network. As participants are de facto investors, AltCoins become a form of ponzi scheme. % As a result, dozens of % AltCoins have been created, often without any significant changes to the % technology. A large number of AltCoins creates additional overheads for % currency exchange and exacerbates the problems with currency fluctuations. \end{itemize} GreenCoinX\footnote{\url{https://www.greencoinx.com/}} is a more recent AltCoin where the company promises to identify the owner of each coin via e-mail addresses and phone numbers. While it is unclear from their technical description how this identification would be enforced against a determined adversary, the resulting payment system would also merely impose a totalitarian financial panopticon on a BitCoin-style money supply and transaction model, thus largely combining what we would consider to be the drawbacks of existing credit card systems. \subsection{Chaum-style electronic cash} Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind} proposed a digital payment system that would provide some customer anonymity while disclosing the identity of the merchants. DigiCash, a commercial implementation of Chaum's proposal, had some limitations and ultimately failed to be widely adopted. In our assessment, key reasons for DigiCash's failure include: \begin{itemize} \item The use of patents to protect the technology; a payment system should be free software (libre) to have a chance for widespread adoption. \item Support for payments to off-line merchants, and thus deferred detection of double-spending, requires the exchange to attempt to recover funds from delinquent customers via the legal system. Any system that fails to be self-enforcing creates a major business risk for the exchange and merchants. In 1983, there were merchants without network connectivity, making that feature relevant, but today network connectivity is feasible for most merchants, and saves both the exchange and merchants the business risks associated with deferred fraud detection. \item % In addition to the risk of legal disputes with fraudulent % merchants and customers, Chaum's published design does not clearly limit the financial damage a exchange might suffer from the disclosure of its private online signing key. \item Chaum did not support fractional payments or refunds without weakening customer anonymity. %, and Brand's % extensions for fractional payments broke unlinkability and thus % limited anonymity. % \item Chaum's system was implemented at a time where the US market % was still dominated by paper checks and the European market was % fragmented into dozens of currencies. Today, SEPA provides a % unified currency and currency transfer method for most of Europe, % significantly lowering the barrier to entry into this domain for % a larger market. \end{itemize} Chaum's original digital cash system~\cite{chaum1983blind} was extended by Brands~\cite{brands1993efficient} with the ability to {\em divide} coins and thus spend certain fractions of a coin using restrictive blind signatures. Restrictive blind signatures create privacy risks: if a transaction is interrupted, then any coins sent to the merchant become tainted, but may never arrive or be spent. It becomes tricky to extract the value of the tainted coins without linking to the aborted transaction and risking deanonymization. Ian Goldberg's HINDE system allowed the merchant to provide change, but the mechanism could be abused to hide income from taxation.\footnote{Description based on personal communication. HINDE was never published.} $k$-show signatures~\cite{brands1993efficient} were proposed to achieve divisibility for coins. However, with $k$-show signatures multiple transactions can be linked to each other. Performing fractional payments using $k$-show signatures is also rather expensive. % %Some argue that the focus on technically perfect but overwhelmingly %complex protocols, as well as the the lack of usable, practical %solutions lead to an abandonment of these ideas by %practitioners~\cite{selby2004analyzing}. % % FIXME: ask OpenCoin dev's about this! Then make statement firmer! To our knowledge, the only publicly available effort to implement Chaum's idea is Opencoin~\cite{dent2008extensions}. However, Opencoin is neither actively developed nor used, and it is not clear to what degree the implementation is even complete. Only a partial description of the Opencoin protocol is available to date. \subsection{Peppercoin} Peppercoin~\cite{rivest2004peppercoin} is a microdonation protocol. The main idea of the protocol is to reduce transaction costs by minimizing the number of transactions that are processed directly by the exchange. Instead of always paying, the customer ``gambles'' with the merchant for each microdonation. Only if the merchant wins, the microdonation is upgraded to a macropayment to be deposited at the exchange. Peppercoin does not provide customer-anonymity. The proposed statistical method by which exchanges detect fraudulent cooperation between customers and merchants at the expense of the exchange not only creates legal risks for the exchange, but would also require that the exchange learns about microdonations where the merchant did not get upgraded to a macropayment. It is therefore unclear how Peppercoin would actually reduce the computational burden on the exchange. \section{Design} The Taler system comprises three principal types of actors (Figure~\ref{fig:cmm}): The \emph{customer} is interested in receiving goods or services from the \emph{merchant} in exchange for payment. When making a transaction, both the customer and the merchant use the same \emph{exchange}, which serves as a payment service provider for the financial transaction between the two. The exchange is responsible for allowing the customer to convert financial reserves to the anonymous digital coins, and for enabling the merchant to convert spent digital coins back to funds in a financial reserve. In addition, we describe an \emph{auditor} who assures customers and merchants that the exchange operates correctly. \subsection{Security model} Taler's security model assumes that cryptographic primitives are secure and that each participant is under full control of his system. The contact information of the exchange is known to both customer and merchant from the start. We further assume that the customer can authenticate the merchant, e.g. using X.509 certificates~\cite{rfc5280}. Finally, we assume that customer has an anonymous bi-directional channel, such as Tor, to communicate with both the exchange and the merchant. The exchange is trusted to hold funds of its customers and to forward them when receiving the respective deposit instructions from the merchants. Customer and merchant can have assurances about the exchange's liquidity and operation though published audits by financial regulators or other trusted third parties. If sufficently regular, audits of the exchange's accounts should reveal any possible fraud. Online signing keys expire regularly, allowing the exchange to destroy the corresponding accumulated cryptographic proofs. The merchant is trusted to deliver the service or goods to the customer upon receiving payment. The customer can seek legal relief to achieve this, as he receives cryptographic proofs of the contract and has proof that he paid his obligations. Neither the merchant nor the customer have any ability to {\em effectively} defraud the exchange or the state collecting taxes. Here, ``effectively'' means that the expected return for fraud is negative. % Note that customers do not need to be trusted in any way, and that in particular it is never necessary for anyone to try to recover funds from customers using legal coersion. \subsection{Taxability and Entities} Taler ensures that the state can tax {\em transactions}. We must, howerver, clarify what constitutes a transaction that can be taxed. For ethical and practical reasons, we assume that coins can freely be copied between machines, and that coin deletion cannot be verified. Avoiding these assumptions would require extreme measures, like custom hardware supplied by the exchange. Also, it would be inappropriate to tax the moving of funds between two computers owned by the same entity. Finally, we assume that at the time digital coins are withdrawn, the wallet receiving the coins is owned by the individual who is performing the authentication to authorize the withdrawal. Preventing the owner of the reserve from deliberately authorizing someone else to withdraw electronic coins would require extreme measures, including preventing them from communicating with anyone but the exchange terminal during withdrawal. As such measures would be totally impractical for a minor loophole, we are not concerned with enabling the state to strongly identify the recipient of coins from a withdrawal operation. We view ownership of a coin's private key as a ``capability'' to spend the funds. A taxable transaction occurs when a merchant entity gains control over the funds while at the same time a customer entity looses control over the funds in a manner verifiable to the merchant. In other words, we restrict the definition of taxable transactions to those transfers of funds where the recipient merchant is distrustful of the spending customer, and requires verification that the customer lost the capability to spend the funds. Conversely, if a coin's private key is shared between two entities, then both entities have equal access to the credentials represented by the private key. In a payment system, this means that either entity could spend the associated funds. Assuming the payment system has effective double-spending detection, this means that either entity has to constantly fear that the funds might no longer be available to it. It follows that sharing coins by copying a private key implies mutual trust between the two parties, in which case we treat them as the same entity for taxability. In Taler, making funds available by copying a private key and thus sharing control is {\bf not} considered a {\em transaction} and thus {\bf not} recorded for taxation. Taler does, however, ensure taxability when a merchant entity acquires exclusive control over the value represented by a digital coins. For such transactions, the state can obtain information from the exchange, or a bank, that identifies the entity that received the digital coins as well as the exact value of those coins. Taler also allows the exchange, and hence the state, to learn the value of digital coins withdrawn by a customer---but not how, where, or when they were spent. \subsection{Anonymity} We assume that an anonymous communication channel such as Tor~\cite{tor-design} is used for all communication between the customer and the merchant, as well as for refreshing tainted coins with the exchange and for retrieving the exchange's denomination key. Ideally, the customer's anonymity is limited only by this channel; however, the payment system does additionally reveal that the customer is one of the patrons of the exchange. There are naturally risks that the customer-merchant business operation may leak identifying information about the customer. We consider information leakage specific to the business logic to be outside of the scope of the design of Taler. Aside from refreshing and obtaining denomination key, the customer should ideally use an anonymous communication channel with the exchange to obscure their IP address for location privacy, but naturally the exchange would typically learn the customer's identity from the wire transfer that funds the customer's withdrawal of anonymous digital coins. We believe this may even be desirable as there are laws, or bank policies, that limit the amount of cash that an individual customer can withdraw in a given time period~\cite{france2015cash,greece2015cash}. Taler is thus only anonymous with respect to {\em payments}. In particular, the exchange is unable to link the known identity of the customer that withdrew anonymous digital coins to the {\em purchase} performed later at the merchant. While the customer thus has anonymity for purchases, the exchange will always learn the merchant's identity in order to credit the merchant's account. This is also necessary for taxation, as Taler deliberately exposes these events as anchors for tax audits on income. % Technically, the merchant could still %use an anonymous communication channel to communicate with the exchange. %However, in order to receive the traditional currency the exchange will %require (SEPA) account details for the deposit. %As both the initial transaction between the customer and the exchange as %well as the transactions between the merchant and the exchange do not have %to be done anonymously, there might be a formal business contract %between the customer and the exchange and the merchant and the exchange. Such %a contract may provide customers and merchants some assurance that %they will actually receive the traditional currency from the exchange %given cryptographic proof about the validity of the transaction(s). %However, given the business overheads for establishing such contracts %and the natural goal for the exchange to establish a reputation and to %minimize cost, it is more likely that the exchange will advertise its %external auditors and proven reserves and thereby try to convince %customers and merchants to trust it without a formal contract. \subsection{Coins} A \emph{coin} in Taler is a public-private key pair where the private key is only known to the owner of the coin. A coin derives its financial value from an RSA signature over a the full domain hash (FDH) of the coin's public key. An FDH is used so that ``one-more forgery'' is provably hard assuming the RSA known-target inversion problem is hard~cite[Theorem 12]{RSA-HDF-KTIvCTI}. The exchange has multiple RSA {\em denomination key} pairs available for blind-signing coins of different value. Denomination keys have an expiration date, before which any coins signed with it must be spent or refreshed. This allows the exchange to eventually discard records of old transactions, thus limiting the records that the exchange must retain and search to detect double-spending attempts. Furthermore, the exchange uses each denomination key only for a limited number of coins. In this way, if a private denomination key were to be compromised, the exchange would detect this once more coins were redeemed than the total that was signed into existence using that denomination key. In this case, the exchange can allow authentic customers to exchange their unspent coins that were signed with the compromised private key, while refusing further anonymous transactions involving those coins. As a result, the financial damage of losing a private signing key can be limited to at most twice the amount originally signed with that key. We also ensure that the exchange cannot deanonymize users by signing each coin with a fresh denomination key. For this, exchanges are required to publicly announce their denomination keys in advance. These announcements are expected to be signed with an off-line long-term private {\em master signing key} of the exchange and the auditor. Additionally, customers should obtain these announcements using an anonymous communication channel. Before a customer can withdraw a coin from the exchange, he has to pay the exchange the value of the coin, as well as processing fees. This is done using other means of payment, such as wire transfers or by having a financial {\em reserve} at the exchange. Taler assumes that the customer has a {\em withdrawal authorization key} to identify himself as authorized to withdraw funds from the reserve. By signing the withdrawal request using this withdrawal authorization key, the customer can prove to the exchange that he is authorized to withdraw anonymous digital coins from his reserve. The exchange records the withdrawal message as proof that the reserve was debited correctly. %To put it differently, unlike %modern cryptocurrencies like BitCoin, Taler's design simply %acknowledges that primitive accumulation~\cite{engels1844} predates %the system and that a secure method to authenticate owners exists. After a coin is issued, the customer is the only entity that knows the private key of the coin, making him the \emph{owner} of the coin. Due to the use of blind signatures, the exchange does not even learn the public key during the withdrawal process. If the private key is shared with others, they become co-owners of the coin. Knowledge of the private key of the coin enables the owner to spent the coin. \subsection{Coin spending} A customer spends a coin at a merchant by cryptographically signing a {\em deposit authorization} with the coin's private key. A deposit authorization specifies the fraction of the coin's value to be paid to the merchant, the salted hash of a merchant's financial reserve routing information and a {\em business transaction-specific hash}. Taler exchanges ensure that all transactions involving the same coin do not exceed the total value of the coin simply by requiring that merchants clear transactions immediately with the exchange. If the customer is cheating and the coin was already spent, the exchange provides the previous deposit authorization as cryptographic proof of the fraud to the merchant. If the deposit authorization is correct, the exchange transfers the funds to the merchant by crediting the merchant's financial reserve, e.g. using a wire transfer. \subsection{Refreshing Coins} If only a fraction of a coin's value has been spent, or if a transaction fails for other reasons, it is possible that a customer has revealed the public key of a coin to a merchant, but not ultimately spent the full value of the coin. If the customer then continues to directly use the coin in other transactions, merchants and the exchange could link the various transactions as they all share the same public key for the coin. We call a coin {\em dirty} if its public key is known to anyone but the owner. To avoid linkability of transactions, Taler allows the owner of a dirty coin to exchange it for a {\em fresh} coin using the {\em coin refreshing protocol}. Even if a coin is not dirty, the owner of a coin may want to exchange it if the respective denomination key is about to expire. The {\em coin refreshing protocol}, allows the owner of a coin to {\em melt} it for fresh coins of the same total value with a new public-private key pairs. Refreshing does not use the ordinary spending operation as the owner of a coin should not have to pay (income) taxes for refreshing. However, to ensure that refreshing is not used for money laundering or tax evasion, the refreshing protocol assures that the owner stays the same. The refresh protocol has two key properties: First, the exchange is unable to link the fresh coin's public key to the public key of the dirty coin. Second, it is assured that the owner of the dirty coin can determine the private key of the fresh coin, thereby preventing the refresh protocol from being used to transfer ownership. \section{Taler's Cryptographic Protocols} % In this section, we describe the protocols for Taler in detail. For the sake of brevity we omit explicitly saying each time that a recipient of a signed message always first checks that the signature is valid. Furthermore, the receiver of a signed message is either told the respective public key, or knows it from the context. Also, all signatures contain additional identification as to the purpose of the signature, making it impossible to use a signature in a different context. An exchange has a long-term offline key which is used to certify denomination keys and {\em online message signing keys} of the exchange. {\em Online message signing keys} are used for signing protocol messages; denomination keys are used for blind-signing coins. The exchange's long-term offline key is assumed to be known to both customers and merchants and is certified by the auditors. We avoid asking either customers or merchants to make trust desissions about individual exchanges. Instead, they need only select the auditors. Auditors must sign all the exchange's keys including, the individual denomination keys. As we are dealing with financial transactions, we explicitly describe whenever entities need to safely commit data to persistent storage. As long as those commitments persist, the protocol can be safely resumed at any step. Commitments to disk are cumulative, that is an additional commitment does not erase the previously committed information. Keys and thus coins always have a well-known expiration date; information committed to disk can be discarded after the expiration date of the respective public key. Customers may discard information once the respective coins have been fully spent, so long as refunds are not required. Merchants may discard information once payments from the exchange have been received, assuming the records are also no longer needed for tax purposes. The exchange's bank transfers dealing in traditional currency are expected to be recorded for tax authorities to ensure taxability. % FIXME: Auditor? We use RSA for denomination keys and EdDSA over some eliptic curve $\mathbb{E}$ for all other keys. Let $G$ denote the generator of our elliptic curve $\mathbb{E}$. \subsection{Withdrawal} To withdraw anonymous digital coins, the customer first selects an exchange and one of its public denomination public keys $K_p$ whose value $K_v$ corresponds to an amount the customer wishes to withdraw. We let $K_s$ denote the exchange's private key corresponding to $K_p$. Now the customer carries out the following interaction with the exchange: % FIXME: We say withdrawal key in this document, but say reserve key in % others, so probably withdrawal key should be renamed to reserve key. % FIXME: These steps occur at very different points in time, so probably % they should be restructured into more of a protocol discription. % It does create some confusion, like is a withdrawal key semi-ephemeral % like a linking key? \begin{enumerate} \item The customer randomly generates: \begin{itemize} \item withdrawal key $W := (w_s,W_p)$ with private key $w_s$ and public key $W_p$, \item coin key $C := (c_s,C_p)$ with private key $c_s$ and public key $C_p := c_s G$, \item blinding factor $b$, and commits $\langle W, C, b \rangle$ to disk. \end{itemize} \item The customer transfers an amount of money corresponding to at least $K_v$ to the exchange, with $W_p$ in the subject line of the transaction. \item The exchange receives the transaction and credits the $W_p$ reserve with the respective amount in its database. \item The customer sends $S_W(B_b(C_p))$ to the exchange to request withdrawal of $C$; here, $B_b$ denotes Chaum-style blinding with blinding factor $b$. \item The exchange checks if the same withdrawal request was issued before; in this case, it sends $S_{K}(B_b(C_p))$ to the customer.\footnote{$S_K$ denotes a Chaum-style blind signature with private key $K_s$.} If this is a fresh withdrawal request, the exchange performs the following transaction: \begin{enumerate} \item checks if the reserve $W_p$ has sufficient funds for a coin of value corresponding to $K$ \item stores the withdrawal request and response $\langle S_W(B_b(C_p)), S_K(B_b(C_p)) \rangle$ in its database for future reference, \item deducts the amount corresponding to $K$ from the reserve, \end{enumerate} and then sends $S_{K}(B_b(C_p))$ to the customer. If the guards for the transaction fail, the exchange sends a descriptive error back to the customer, with proof that it operated correctly. Assuming the signature was valid, this would involve showing the transaction history for the reserve. % FIXME: Is it really the whole history? \item The customer computes and verifies the unblinded signature $S_K(C_p) = U_b(S_K(B_b(C_p)))$. The customer saves the coin $\langle S_K(C_p), c_s \rangle$ to local wallet on disk. \end{enumerate} \subsection{Exact and partial spending} A customer can spend coins at a merchant, under the condition that the merchant trusts the exchange that issued the coin. % FIXME: Auditor here? Merchants are identified by their public key $M_p = m_s G$ which the customer's wallet learns through the merchant's webpage, which itself must be authenticated with X.509c. % FIXME: Is this correct? We now describe the protocol between the customer, merchant, and exchange for a transaction in which the customer spends a coin $C := (c_s, C_p)$ with signature $\widetilde{C} := S_K(C_p)$ where $K$ is the exchange's demonination key. % FIXME: Again, these steps occur at different points in time, maybe % that's okay, but refresh is slightly different. \begin{enumerate} \item\label{contract} Let $\vec{D} := D_1, \ldots, D_n$ be the list of exchanges accepted by the merchant where each $D_j$ is a exchange's public key. The merchant creates a digitally signed contract $\mathcal{A} := S_M(m, f, a, H(p, r), \vec{D})$ where $m$ is an identifier for this transaction, $a$ is data relevant to the contract indicating which services or goods the merchant will deliver to the customer, $f$ is the price of the offer, and $p$ is the merchant's payment information (e.g. his IBAN number), and $r$ is a random nonce. The merchant commits $\langle \mathcal{A} \rangle$ to disk and sends $\mathcal{A}$ to the customer. \item\label{deposit} The customer should already possess a coin issued by a exchange that is accepted by the merchant, meaning $K$ should be publicly signed by some $D_j \in \{D_1, D_2, \ldots, D_n\}$, and has a value $\geq f$. \item The customer generates a \emph{deposit-permission} $\mathcal{D} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, m, f, H(a), H(p,r), M_p)$ and sends $\langle \mathcal{D}, D_j\rangle$ to the merchant, where $D_j$ is the exchange which signed $K$. \item The merchant gives $(\mathcal{D}, p, r)$ to the exchange, thereby revealing $p$ only to the exchange. \item The exchange validates $\mathcal{D}$ and checks for double spending. If the coin has been involved in previous transactions and the new one would exceed its remaining value, it sends an error with the records from the previous transactions back to the merchant. % If double spending is not found, the exchange commits $\langle \mathcal{D} \rangle$ to disk and notifies the merchant that the deposit operation was successful. \item The merchant commits and forwards the notification from the exchange to the customer, confirming the success or failure of the operation. \end{enumerate} We have simplified the exposition by assuming that one coin suffices, but in practice a customer can use multiple coins from the same exchange where the total value adds up to $f$ by running the above steps for each of the coins. If a transaction is aborted after Step~\ref{deposit}, subsequent transactions with the same coin could be linked to the coin, but not directly to the coin's owner. The same applies to partially spent coins where $f$ is smaller than the actual value of the coin. To unlink subsequent transactions from a coin, the customer has to execute the coin refreshing protocol with the exchange. %\begin{figure}[h] %\centering %\begin{tikzpicture} % %\tikzstyle{def} = [node distance= 1em, inner sep=.5em, outer sep=.3em]; %\node (origin) at (0,0) {}; %\node (offer) [def,below=of origin]{make offer (merchant $\rightarrow$ customer)}; %\node (A) [def,below=of offer]{permit lock (customer $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; %\node (B) [def,below=of A]{apply lock (merchant $\rightarrow$ exchange)}; %\node (C) [def,below=of B]{confirm (or refuse) lock (exchange $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; %\node (D) [def,below=of C]{sign contract (merchant $\rightarrow$ customer)}; %\node (E) [def,below=of D]{permit deposit (customer $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; %\node (F) [def,below=of E]{make deposit (merchant $\rightarrow$ exchange)}; %\node (G) [def,below=of F]{transfer confirmation (exchange $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; % %\tikzstyle{C} = [color=black, line width=1pt] %\draw [->,C](offer) -- (A); %\draw [->,C](A) -- (B); %\draw [->,C](B) -- (C); %\draw [->,C](C) -- (D); %\draw [->,C](D) -- (E); %\draw [->,C](E) -- (F); %\draw [->,C](F) -- (G); % %\draw [->,C, bend right, shorten <=2mm] (E.east) % to[out=-135,in=-45,distance=3.8cm] node[left] {aggregate} (D.east); %\end{tikzpicture} %\caption{Interactions between a customer, merchant and exchange in the coin spending % protocol} %\label{fig:spending_protocol_interactions} %\end{figure} \subsection{Refreshing} \label{sec:refreshing} We now describe the refresh protocol whereby a dirty coin $C'$ of denomination $K$ is melted to obtain a fresh coin $\widetilde{C}$ with the same denomination. In practice, Taler uses a natural extension where multiple fresh coins are generated a the same time to enable giving precise change matching any amount. In the protocol, $\kappa \ge 3$ is a security parameter and $G$ is the generator of the elliptic curve. % FIXME: I'm explicit about the rounds in postquantum.tex \begin{enumerate} \item For each $i = 1,\ldots,\kappa$, the customer randomly generates \begin{itemize} \item transfer key $T^{(i)} := \left(t^{(i)}_s,T^{(i)}_p\right)$ where $T^{(i)}_p := t^{(i)}_s G$, \item coin key pair $C^{(i)} := \left(c_s^{(i)}, C_p^{(i)}\right)$ where $C^{(i)}_p := c^{(i)}_s G$, and \item blinding factors $b^{(i)}$. \end{itemize} The customer then computes $E^{(i)} := E_{K_i}\left(c_s^{(i)}, b^{(i)}\right)$ where $K_i := H(c'_s T_p^{(i)})$, and commits $\langle C', \vec{T}, \vec{C}, \vec{b} \rangle$ to disk. Our computation of $K_i$ is effectively a Diffie-Hellman operation between the private key $c'_s$ of the original coin with the public transfer key $T_p^{(i)}$. \item The customer computes $B^{(i)} := B_{b^{(i)}}(C^{(i)}_p)$ for $i \in \{1,\ldots,\kappa\}$ and sends a commitment $S_{C'}(\vec{E}, \vec{B}, \vec{T_p})$ to the exchange. \item The exchange generates a random $\gamma$ with $1 \le \gamma \le \kappa$ and marks $C'_p$ as spent by committing $\langle C', \gamma, S_{C'}(\vec{E}, \vec{B}, \vec{T_p}) \rangle$ to disk. Auditing processes should assure that $\gamma$ is unpredictable until this time to prevent the exchange from assisting tax evasion. \item The exchange sends $S_{K'}(C'_p, \gamma)$ to the customer where $K'$ is the exchange's message signing key. \item The customer commits $\langle C', S_K(C'_p, \gamma) \rangle$ to disk. \item The customer computes $\mathfrak{R} := \left(t_s^{(i)}\right)_{i \ne \gamma}$ and sends $S_{C'}(\mathfrak{R})$ to the exchange. \item \label{step:refresh-ccheck} The exchange checks whether $\mathfrak{R}$ is consistent with the commitments; specifically, it computes for $i \not= \gamma$: \vspace{-2ex} \begin{minipage}{5cm} \begin{align*} \overline{K}_i :&= H(t_s^{(i)} C_p'), \\ (\overline{c}_s^{(i)}, \overline{b_i}) :&= D_{\overline{K}_i}(E^{(i)}), \\ \overline{C^{(i)}_p} :&= \overline{c}_s^{(i)} G, \end{align*} \end{minipage} \begin{minipage}{5cm} \begin{align*} \overline{T_p^{(i)}} :&= t_s^{(i)} G, \\ \\ \overline{B^{(i)}} :&= B_{\overline{b_i}}(\overline{C_p^{(i)}}), \end{align*} \end{minipage} and checks if $\overline{B^{(i)}} = B^{(i)}$ and $\overline{T^{(i)}_p} = T^{(i)}_p$. \item \label{step:refresh-done} If the commitments were consistent, the exchange sends the blind signature $\widetilde{C} := S_{K}(B^{(\gamma)})$ to the customer. Otherwise, the exchange responds with an error indicating the location of the failure. \end{enumerate} %\subsection{N-to-M Refreshing} % %TODO: Explain, especially subtleties regarding session key / the spoofing attack that requires signature. \subsection{Linking} % FIXME: What is \mathtt{link} ? For a coin that was successfully refreshed, the exchange responds to a request $S_{C'}(\mathtt{link})$ with $(T^{(\gamma)}_p$, $E^{(\gamma)}, \widetilde{C})$. % This allows the owner of the melted coin to also obtain the private key of the new coin, even if the refreshing protocol was illicitly executed with the help of another party who generated $\vec{c_s}$ and only provided $\vec{C_p}$ and other required information to the old owner. As a result, linking ensures that access to the new coins issued in the refresh protocol is always {\em shared} with the owner of the melted coins. This makes it impossible to abuse the refresh protocol for {\em transactions}. The linking request is not expected to be used at all during ordinary operation of Taler. If the refresh protocol is used by Alice to obtain change as designed, she already knows all of the information and thus has little reason to request it via the linking protocol. The fundamental reason why the exchange must provide the link protocol is simply to provide a threat: if Bob were to use the refresh protocol for a transaction of funds from Alice to him, Alice may use a link request to gain shared access to Bob's coins. Thus, this threat prevents Alice and Bob from abusing the refresh protocol to evade taxation on transactions. If Bob trusts Alice to not execute the link protocol, then they can already conspire to evade taxation by simply exchanging the original private coin keys. This is permitted in our taxation model as with such trust they are assumed to be the same entity. The auditor can anonymously check if the exchange correctly implements the link request, thus preventing the exchange operator from legally disabling this protocol component. Without the link operation, Taler would devolve into a payment system where both sides can be anonymous, and thus no longer provide taxability. \subsection{Error handling} During operation, there are three main types of errors that are expected. First, in the case of faulty clients, the responding server will generate an error message with detailed cryptographic proofs demonstrating that the client was faulty, for example by providing proof of double-spending or providing the previous commit and the location of the missmatch in the case of the reveal step in the refresh protocol. It is also possible that the server may claim that the client has been violating the protocol. In these cases, the clients should verify any proofs provided and if they are acceptable, notify the user that they are somehow faulty. Similar, if the server indicates that the client is violating the protocol, the client should record the interaction and enable the user to file a bug report. The second case is a faulty exchange service provider. Here, faults will be detected when the exchange provides a faulty proof or no proof. In this case, the client is expected to notify the auditor, providing a transcript of the interaction. The auditor can then anonymously replay the transaction, and either provide the now correct response to the client or take appropriate legal action against the faulty exchange. The third case are transient failures, such as network failures or temporary hardware failures at the exchange service provider. Here, the client may receive an explicit protocol indication, such as an HTTP response code 500 ``internal server error'' or simply no response. The appropriate behavior for the client is to automatically retry after 1s, and twice more at randomized times within 1 minute. If those three attempts fail, the user should be informed about the delay. The client should then retry another three times within the next 24h, and after that time the auditor be informed about the outage. Using this process, short term failures should be effectively obscured from the user, while malicious behavior is reported to the auditor who can then presumably rectify the situation, using methods such as shutting down the operator and helping customers to regain refunds for coins in their wallets. To ensure that such refunds are possible, the operator is expected to always provide adequate securities for the amount of coins in circulation as part of the certification process. %As with support for fractional payments, Taler addresses these %problems by allowing customers to refresh tainted coins, thereby %destroying the link between the refunded or aborted transaction and %the new coin. \subsection{Refunds} The refresh protocol offers an easy way to enable refunds to customers, even if they are anonymous. Refunds can be supported by including a public signing key of the merchant in the transaction details, and having the customer keep the private key of the spent coins on file. Given this, the merchant can simply sign a {\em refund confirmation} and share it with the exchange and the customer. Assuming the exchange has a way to recover the funds from the merchant, or has not yet performed the wire transfer, the exchange can simply add the value of the refunded transaction back to the original coin, re-enabling those funds to be spent again by the original customer. This customer can then use the refresh protocol to anonymously melt the refunded coin and create a fresh coin that is unlinkable to the refunded transaction. \section{Experimental results} \begin{figure}[b!] \begin{subfigure}{0.45\columnwidth} \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{bw_in.png} \caption{Incoming traffic at the exchange, in bytes per 5 minutes.} \label{fig:in} \end{subfigure}\hfill \begin{subfigure}{0.45\columnwidth} \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{bw_out.png} \caption{Outgoing traffic from the exchange, in bytes per 5 minutes.} \label{fig:out} \end{subfigure} \begin{subfigure}{0.45\columnwidth} \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{db_read.png} \caption{DB read operations per second.} \label{fig:read} \end{subfigure} \begin{subfigure}{0.45\columnwidth} \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{db_write.png} \caption{DB write operations per second.} \label{fig:write} \end{subfigure} \begin{subfigure}{0.45\columnwidth} \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{cpu_balance.png} \caption{CPU credit balance. Hitting a balance of 0 shows the CPU is the limiting factor.} \label{fig:cpu} \end{subfigure}\hfill \begin{subfigure}{0.45\columnwidth} \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{cpu_usage.png} \caption{CPU utilization. The t2.micro instance is allowed to use 10\% of one CPU.} \label{fig:usage} \end{subfigure} \caption{Selected EC2 performance monitors for the experiment in the EC2 (after several hours, once the system was ``warm'').} \label{fig:ec2} \end{figure} We ran the Taler exchange v0.0.2 on an Amazon EC2 t2.micro instance (10\% of a Xeon E5-2676 at 2.4 GHz) based on Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS, using a db.t2.micro instance with Postgres 9.5 for the database. Using 16 concurrent clients performing withdraw, deposit and refresh operations we then pushed the t2.micro instance to the resource limit (Figure~\ref{fig:cpu}) from a network with $\approx$ 160 ms latency to the EC2 instance. At that point, the instance managed about 8 HTTP requests per second, which roughly corresponds to one full business transaction (as a full business transaction is expected to involve withdrawing and depositing several coins). The network traffic was modest at approximately 50 kbit/sec from the exchange (Figure~\ref{fig:out}) and 160 kbit/sec to the exchange (Figure~\ref{fig:in}). At network latencies above 10 ms, the delay for executing a transaction is dominated by the network latency, as local processing virtually always takes less than 10 ms. Database transactions are dominated by writes (Figure~\ref{fig:read} vs. Figure~\ref{fig:write}), as Taler mostly needs to log transactions and occasionally needs to read to guard against double-spending. Given a database capacity of 2 TB---which should suffice for more than one year of full transaction logs---the described setup has a hosting cost within EC2 of approximately USD 252 per month, or roughly 0.0001 USD per full business transaction. This compares favorably to the $\approx$ USD 10 per business transaction for Bitcoin and the \EUR{0.35} plus 1.9\% charged by Paypal for domestic transfers within Germany. In the Amazon EC2 billing, the cost for the database (using SSD storage) dominates the cost with more than USD 243 per month. We note that these numbers are approximate, as the frontend and backend in our configuration uses systems from the AWS Free Usage Tier and is not perfectly balanced in between frontend and backend. Nevertheless, these experimental results show that computing-related business costs will only marginally contribute to the operational costs of the Taler payment system. \section{Discussion} Taler was designed for use in a modern social-liberal society and provides a payment system with the following key properties: \begin{description} \item[Customer Anonymity] It is impossible for exchanges, merchants and even a global active adversary, to trace the spending behavior of a customer. As a strong form of customer anonymity, it is also infeasible to link a set of transactions to the same (anonymous) customer. %, even when taking aborted transactions into account. There is, however, a risk of metadata leakage if a customer acquires coins matching exactly the price quoted by a merchant, or if a customer uses coins issued by multiple exchanges for the same transaction. Hence, our implementation does not allow this. \item[Taxability] In many current legal systems, it is the responsibility of the merchant to deduct sales taxes from purchases made by customers, or for workers to pay income taxes for payments received for work. Taler ensures that merchants are easily identifiable and that an audit trail is generated, so that the state can ensure that its taxation regime is obeyed. \item[Verifiability] Taler minimizes the trust necessary between participants. In particular, digital signatures are retained whenever they would play a role in resolving disputes. Additionally, customers cannot defraud anyone, and merchants can only defraud their customers by not delivering on the agreed contract. Neither merchants nor customers are able to commit fraud against the exchange. Only the exchange needs be tightly audited and regulated. \item[No speculation] % It's actually "Specualtion not required" The digital coins are denominated in existing currencies, such as EUR or USD. This avoids exposing citizens to unnecessary risks from currency fluctuations. \item[Low resource consumption] The design minimizes the operating costs and environmental impact of the payment system. It uses few public key operations per transaction and entirely avoids proof-of-work computations. The payment system handles both small and large payments in an efficient and reliable manner. \end{description} \subsection{Well-known attacks} Taler's security is largely equivalent to that of Chaum's original design without online checks or the cut-and-choose revelation of double-spending customers for offline spending. We specifically note that the digital equivalent of the ``Columbian Black Market Exchange''~\cite{fatf1997} is a theoretical problem for both Chaum and Taler, as individuals with a strong mutual trust foundation can simply copy electronic coins and thereby establish a limited form of black transfers. However, unlike the situation with physical checks with blank recipients in the Columbian black market, the transitivity is limited as each participant can deposit the electronic coins and thereby cheat any other participant, while in the Columbian black market each participant only needs to trust the issuer of the check and not also all previous owners of the physical check. As with any unconditionally anonymous payment system, the ``Perfect Crime'' attack~\cite{solms1992perfect} where blackmail is used to force the exchange to issue anonymous coins also continues to apply in principle. However, as mentioned Taler does facilitate limits on withdrawals, which we believe is a better trade-off than the problematic escrow systems where the necessary intransparency actually facilitates voluntary cooperation between the exchange and criminals~\cite{sander1999escrow} and where the state could deanonymize citizens. \subsection{Offline Payments} Chaum's original proposals for anonymous digital cash avoided the need for online interactions with the exchange to detect double spending by providing a means to deanonymize customers involved in double-spending. This is problematic as the exchange or the merchant still need out-of-band means to recover funds from the customer, which may be infeasible in practice. Furthermore, a customer may accidentally deanonymize himself, for example by double-spending a coin after restoring from backup. %\subsection{Merchant Tax Audits} % %For a tax audit on the merchant, the exchange includes the business %transaction-specific hash in the transfer of the traditional %currency. A tax auditor can then request the merchant to reveal %(meaningful) details about the business transaction ($\mathcal{D}$, %$a$, $p$, $r$), including proof that applicable taxes were paid. % %If a merchant is not able to provide theses values, he can be %subjected to financial penalties by the state in relation to the %amount transferred by the traditional currency transfer. \subsection{Cryptographic proof vs. evidence} In this paper we have use the term ``proof'' in many places as the protocol provides cryptographic proofs of which parties behave correctly or incorrectly. However, as~\cite{fc2014murdoch} point out, in practice financial systems need to provide evidence that holds up in courts. Taler's implementation is designed to export evidence and upholds the core principles described in~\cite{fc2014murdoch}. In particular, in providing the cryptographic proofs as evidence none of the participants have to disclose their core secrets. %\subsection{System Performance} % %We performed some initial performance measurements for the various %operations on our exchange implementation. The main conclusion was that %the computational and bandwidth cost for transactions described in %this paper is smaller than $10^{-3}$ cent/transaction, and thus %dwarfed by the other business costs for the exchange. However, this %figure excludes the cost of currency transfers using traditional %banking, which a exchange operator would ultimately have to interact with. %Here, exchange operators should be able to reduce their expenses by %aggregating multiple transfers to the same merchant. %\section{Conclusion} %We have presented an efficient electronic payment system that %simultaneously addresses the conflicting objectives created by the %citizen's need for privacy and the state's need for taxation. The %coin refreshing protocol makes the design flexible and enables a %variety of payment methods. The current balance and profits of the %exchange are also easily determined, thus audits can be used to ensure %that the exchange operates correctly. The libre implementation and open %protocol may finally enable modern society to upgrade to proper %electronic wallets with efficient, secure and privacy-preserving %transactions. % commented out for anonymized submission %\subsection*{Acknowledgements} %This work was supported by a grant from the Renewable Freedom Foundation. % FIXME: ARED? %We thank Tanja Lange, Dan Bernstein, Luis Ressel and Fabian Kirsch for feedback on an earlier %version of this paper, Nicolas Fournier for implementing and running %some performance benchmarks, and Richard Stallman, Hellekin Wolf, %Jacob Appelbaum for productive discussions and support. \bibliographystyle{alpha} \bibliography{taler,rfc} \newpage \appendix \section{Notation summary} The paper uses the subscript $p$ to indicate public keys and $s$ to indicate secret (private) keys. For keys, we also use small letters for scalars and capital letters for points on an elliptic curve. The capital letter without the subscript $p$ stands for the key pair. The superscript $(i)$ is used to indicate one of the elements of a vector during the cut-and-choose protocol. Bold-face is used to indicate a vector over these elements. A line above indicates a value computed by the verifier during the cut-and-choose operation. We use $f()$ to indicate the application of a function $f$ to one or more arguments. Records of data being committed to disk are represented in between $\langle\rangle$. \begin{description} \item[$K_s$]{Denomination private (RSA) key of the exchange used for coin signing} \item[$K_p$]{Denomination public (RSA) key corresponding to $K_s$} \item[$K$]{Public-priate (RSA) denomination key pair $K := (K_s, K_p)$} \item[$b$]{RSA blinding factor for RSA-style blind signatures} \item[$B_b()$]{RSA blinding over the argument using blinding factor $b$} \item[$U_b()$]{RSA unblinding of the argument using blinding factor $b$} \item[$S_K()$]{Chaum-style RSA signature, $S_K(C) = U_b(S_K(B_b(C)))$} \item[$w_s$]{Private key from customer for authentication} \item[$W_p$]{Public key corresponding to $w_s$} \item[$W$]{Public-private customer authentication key pair $W := (w_s, W_p)$} \item[$S_W()$]{Signature over the argument(s) involving key $W$} \item[$m_s$]{Private key from merchant for authentication} \item[$M_p$]{Public key corresponding to $m_s$} \item[$M$]{Public-private merchant authentication key pair $M := (m_s, M_p)$} \item[$S_M()$]{Signature over the argument(s) involving key $M$} \item[$G$]{Generator of the elliptic curve} \item[$c_s$]{Secret key corresponding to a coin, scalar on a curve} \item[$C_p$]{Public key corresponding to $c_s$, point on a curve} \item[$C$]{Public-private coin key pair $C := (c_s, C_p)$} \item[$S_{C}()$]{Signature over the argument(s) involving key $C$ (using EdDSA)} \item[$c_s'$]{Private key of a ``dirty'' coin (otherwise like $c_s$)} \item[$C_p'$]{Public key of a ``dirty'' coin (otherwise like $C_p$)} \item[$C'$]{Dirty coin (otherwise like $C$)} \item[$\widetilde{C}$]{Exchange signature $S_K(C_p)$ indicating validity of a fresh coin (with key $C$)} \item[$n$]{Number of exchanges accepted by a merchant} \item[$j$]{Index into a set of accepted exchanges, $i \in \{1,\ldots,n\}$} \item[$D_j$]{Public key of a exchange (not used to sign coins)} \item[$\vec{D}$]{Vector of $D_j$ signifying exchanges accepted by a merchant} \item[$a$]{Complete text of a contract between customer and merchant} \item[$f$]{Amount a customer agrees to pay to a merchant for a contract} \item[$m$]{Unique transaction identifier chosen by the merchant} \item[$H()$]{Hash function} \item[$p$]{Payment details of a merchant (i.e. wire transfer details for a bank transfer)} \item[$r$]{Random nonce} \item[${\cal A}$]{Complete contract signed by the merchant} \item[${\cal D}$]{Deposit permission, signing over a certain amount of coin to the merchant as payment and to signify acceptance of a particular contract} \item[$\kappa$]{Security parameter $\ge 3$} \item[$i$]{Index over cut-and-choose set, $i \in \{1,\ldots,\kappa\}$} \item[$\gamma$]{Selected index in cut-and-choose protocol, $\gamma \in \{1,\ldots,\kappa\}$} \item[$t^{(i)}_s$]{private transfer key, a scalar} \item[$T^{(i)}_p$]{public transfer key, point on a curve (same curve must be used for $C_p$)} \item[$T^{(i)}$]{public-private transfer key pair $T^{(i)} := (t^{(i)}_s,T^{(i)}_s)$} \item[$\vec{T}$]{Vector of $T^{(i)}$} \item[$c_s^{(i)}$]{Secret key corresponding to a fresh coin, scalar on a curve} \item[$C_p^{(i)}$]{Public key corresponding to $c_s^{(i)}$, point on a curve} \item[$C^{(i)}$]{Public-private coin key pair $C^{(i)} := (c_s^{(i)}, C_p^{(i)})$} \item[$\vec{C}$]{Vector of $C^{(i)}$ (public and private keys)} \item[$b^{(i)}$]{Blinding factor for RSA-style blind signatures} \item[$\vec{b}$]{Vector of $b^{(i)}$} \item[$B^{(i)}$]{Blinding of $C_p^{(i)}$} \item[$\vec{B}$]{Vector of $B^{(i)}$} \item[$K_i$]{Symmetric encryption key derived from ECDH operation via hashing} \item[$E_{K_i}()$]{Symmetric encryption using key $K_i$} \item[$E^{(i)}$]{$i$-th encryption of the private information $(c_s^{(i)}, b_i)$} \item[$\vec{E}$]{Vector of $E^{(i)}$} \item[$\cal{R}$]{Tuple of revealed vectors in cut-and-choose protocol, where the vectors exclude the selected index $\gamma$} \item[$\overline{K_i}$]{Encryption keys derived by the verifier from DH} \item[$\overline{B^{(i)}}$]{Blinded values derived by the verifier} \item[$\overline{T_p^{(i)}}$]{Public transfer keys derived by the verifier from revealed private keys} \item[$\overline{c_s^{(i)}}$]{Private keys obtained from decryption by the verifier} \item[$\overline{b_s^{(i)}}$]{Blinding factors obtained from decryption by the verifier} \item[$\overline{C^{(i)}_p}$]{Public coin keys computed from $\overline{c_s^{(i)}}$ by the verifier} \end{description} \end{document} \section{Optional features} In this appendix we detail various optional features that can be added to the basic protocol to reduce transaction costs for certain interactions. However, we note that Taler's transaction costs are expected to be so low that these features are likely not particularly useful in practice: When we performed some initial performance measurements for the various operations on our exchange implementation, the main conclusion was that the computational and bandwidth cost for transactions described in this paper is smaller than $10^{-3}$ cent/transaction, and thus dwarfed by the other business costs for the exchange. We note that the $10^{-3}$ cent/transaction estimate excludes the cost of wire transfers using traditional banking, which a exchange operator would ultimately have to interact with. Here, exchange operators should be able to reduce their expenses by aggregating multiple transfers to the same merchant. As a result of the low cost of the interaction with the exchange in Taler today, we expect that transactions with amounts below Taler's internal transaction costs to be economically meaningless. Nevertheless, we document various ways how such transactions could be achieved within Taler. \subsection{Incremental spending} For services that include pay-as-you-go billing, customers can over time sign deposit permissions for an increasing fraction of the value of a coin to be paid to a particular merchant. As checking with the exchange for each increment might be expensive, the coin's owner can instead sign a {\em lock permission}, which allows the merchant to get an exclusive right to redeem deposit permissions for the coin for a limited duration. The merchant uses the lock permission to determine if the coin has already been spent and to ensure that it cannot be spent by another merchant for the {\em duration} of the lock as specified in the lock permission. If the coin has insufficient funds because too much has been spent or is already locked, the exchange provides the owner's deposit or locking request and signature to prove the attempted fraud by the customer. Otherwise, the exchange locks the coin for the expected duration of the transaction (and remembers the lock permission). The merchant and the customer can then finalize the business transaction, possibly exchanging a series of incremental payment permissions for services. Finally, the merchant then redeems the coin at the exchange before the lock permission expires to ensure that no other merchant redeems the coin first. \begin{enumerate} \item\label{offer2} The merchant sends an \emph{offer:} $\langle S_M(m, f), \vec{D} \rangle$ containing the price of the offer $f$, a transaction ID $m$ and the list of exchanges $D_1, \ldots, D_n$ accepted by the merchant where each $D_j$ is a exchange's public key. \item\label{lock2} The customer must possess or acquire a coin $\widetilde{C}$ signed by a exchange that is accepted by the merchant, i.e. $K$ should be signed by some $D_j \in \{D_1, D_2, \ldots, D_n\}$, and has a value $\geq f$. Customer then generates a \emph{lock-permission} $\mathcal{L} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, t, m, f, M_p)$ where $t$ specifies the time until which the lock is valid and sends $\langle \mathcal{L}, D_j\rangle$ to the merchant, where $D_j$ is the exchange which signed $K$. \item The merchant asks the exchange to apply the lock by sending $\langle \mathcal{L} \rangle$ to the exchange. \item The exchange validates $\widetilde{C}$ and detects double spending in the form of existing \emph{deposit-permission} or lock-permission records for $\widetilde{C}$. If such records exist and indicate that insufficient funds are left, the exchange sends those records to the merchant, who can then use the records to prove the double spending to the customer. If double spending is not found, the exchange commits $\langle \mathcal{L} \rangle$ to disk and notifies the merchant that locking was successful. \item\label{contract2} The merchant creates a digitally signed contract $\mathcal{A} := S_M(m, f, a, H(p, r))$ where $a$ is data relevant to the contract indicating which services or goods the merchant will deliver to the customer, and $p$ is the merchant's payment information (e.g. his IBAN number) and $r$ is an random nonce. The merchant commits $\langle \mathcal{A} \rangle$ to disk and sends it to the customer. \item The customer creates a \emph{deposit-permission} $\mathcal{D} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, \widetilde{L}, f, m, M_p, H(a), H(p, r))$, commits $\langle \mathcal{A}, \mathcal{D} \rangle$ to disk and sends $\mathcal{D}$ to the merchant. \item\label{invoice_paid2} The merchant commits the received $\langle \mathcal{D} \rangle$ to disk. \item The merchant gives $(\mathcal{D}, p, r)$ to the exchange, revealing his payment information. \item The exchange verifies $(\mathcal{D}, p, r)$ for its validity and checks against double spending, while of course permitting the merchant to withdraw funds from the amount that had been locked for this merchant. \item If $\widetilde{C}$ is valid and no equivalent \emph{deposit-permission} for $\widetilde{C}$ and $\widetilde{L}$ exists on disk, the exchange performs the following transaction: \begin{enumerate} \item $\langle \mathcal{D}, p, r \rangle$ is committed to disk. \item\label{transfer2} transfers an amount of $f$ to the merchant's bank account given in $p$. The subject line of the transaction to $p$ must contain $H(\mathcal{D})$. \end{enumerate} Finally, the exchange sends a confirmation to the merchant. \item If the deposit record $\langle \mathcal{D}, p, r \rangle$ already exists, the exchange sends the confirmation to the merchant, but does not transfer money to $p$ again. \end{enumerate} To facilitate incremental spending of a coin $C$ in a single transaction, the merchant makes an offer in Step~\ref{offer2} with a maximum amount $f_{max}$ he is willing to charge in this transaction from the coin $C$. After obtaining the lock on $C$ for $f_{max}$, the merchant makes a contract in Step~\ref{contract2} with an amount $f \leq f_{max}$. The protocol follows with the following steps repeated after Step~\ref{invoice_paid2} whenever the merchant wants to charge an incremental amount up to $f_{max}$: \begin{enumerate} \setcounter{enumi}{4} \item The merchant generates a new contract $ \mathcal{A}' := S_M(m, f', a', H(p, r)) $ after obtaining the deposit-permission for a previous contract. Here $f'$ is the accumulated sum the merchant is charging the customer, of which the merchant has received a deposit-permission for $f$ from the previous contract \textit{i.e.}~$f ,C](offer) -- (A); %\draw [->,C](A) -- (B); %\draw [->,C](B) -- (C); %\draw [->,C](C) -- (D); %\draw [->,C](D) -- (E); %\draw [->,C](E) -- (F); %\draw [->,C](F) -- (G); % %\draw [->,C, bend right, shorten <=2mm] (E.east) % to[out=-135,in=-45,distance=3.8cm] node[left] {aggregate} (D.east); %\end{tikzpicture} %\caption{Interactions between a customer, merchant and exchange in the coin spending % protocol} %\label{fig:spending_protocol_interactions} %\end{figure} \subsection{Probabilistic donations} Similar to Peppercoin, Taler supports probabilistic {\em micro}donations of coins to support cost-effective transactions for small amounts. We consider amounts to be ``micro'' if the value of the transaction is close or even below the business cost of an individual transaction to the exchange. To support microdonations, an ordinary transaction is performed based on the result of a biased coin flip with a probability related to the desired transaction amount in relation to the value of the coin. More specifically, a microdonation of value $\epsilon$ is upgraded to a macropayment of value $m$ with a probability of $\frac{\epsilon}{m}$. Here, $m$ is chosen such that the business transaction cost at the exchange is small in relation to $m$. The exchange is only involved in the tiny fraction of transactions that are upgraded. On average both customers and merchants end up paying (or receiving) the expected amount $\epsilon$ per microdonation. Unlike Peppercoin, in Taler either the merchant wins and the customer looses the coin, or the merchant looses and the customer keeps the coin. Thus, there is no opportunity for the merchant and the customer to conspire against the exchange. To determine if the coin is to be transferred, merchant and customer execute a secure coin flipping protocol~\cite{blum1981}. The commit values are included in the business contract and are revealed after the contract has been signed using the private key of the coin. If the coin flip is decided in favor of the merchant, the merchant can redeem the coin at the exchange. One issue in this protocol is that the customer may use a worthless coin by offering a coin that has already been spent. This kind of fraud would only be detected if the customer actually lost the coin flip, and at this point the merchant might not be able to recover from the loss. A fraudulent anonymous customer may run the protocol using already spent coins until the coin flip is in his favor. As with incremental spending, lock permissions could be used to ensure that the customer cannot defraud the merchant by offering a coin that has already been spent. However, as this means involving the exchange even if the merchant looses the coin flip, such a scheme is unsuitable for microdonations as the transaction costs from involving the exchange might be disproportionate to the value of the transaction, and thus with locking the probabilistic scheme has no advantage over simply using fractional payments. Hence, Taler uses probabilistic transactions {\em without} online double-spending detection. This enables the customer to defraud the merchant by paying with a coin that was already spent. However, as, by definition, such microdonations are for tiny amounts, the incentive for customers to pursue this kind of fraud is limited. Still, to clarify that the customer must be honest, we prefer the term micro{\em donations} over micro{\em payments} for this scheme. The following steps are executed for microdonations with upgrade probability $p$: \begin{enumerate} \item The merchant sends an offer to the customer. \item The customer sends a commitment $H(r_c)$ to a random value $r_c \in [0,2^R)$, where $R$ is a system parameter. \item The merchant sends random $r_m \in [0,2^R)$ to the customer. \item The customer computes $p' := (|r_c - r_m|) / (2^R)$. If $p' < p$, the customer sends a coin with deposit-permission to the merchant. Otherwise, the customer sends $r_c$ to the merchant. \item The merchant deposits the coin, or checks if $r_c$ is consistent with $H(r_c)$. \end{enumerate} Evidently the customer can ``cheat'' by aborting the transaction in Step 3 of the microdonation protocol if the outcome is unfavorable --- and repeat until he wins. This is why Taler is suitable for microdonations --- where the customer voluntarily contributes --- and not for micropayments. Naturally, if the donations requested are small, the incentive to cheat for minimal gain should be quite low. Payment software could embrace this fact by providing an appeal to conscience in form of an option labeled ``I am unethical and want to cheat'', which executes the dishonest version of the payment protocol. If an organization detects that it cannot support itself with microdonations, it can always choose to switch to the macropayment system with slightly higher transaction costs to remain in business. \newpage