2254 lines
108 KiB
TeX
2254 lines
108 KiB
TeX
% RMS wrote:
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%The text does not mention GNU anywhere. This paper is an opportunity
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%to make people aware of GNU, but the current text fails to use the
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%opportunity.
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%
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%It should say that Taler is a GNU package.
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%
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%I suggest using the term "GNU Taler" in the title, once in the
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%abstract, and the first time the name is mentioned in the body text.
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%In the body text, it can have a footnote with more information
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%including a reference to http://gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.
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%
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%At the top of page 3, where it says "a free software implementation",
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%it should add "(free as in freedom)", with a reference to
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%http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and
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%http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.
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%
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%Would you please include these things in every article or posting?
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%
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% CG adds:
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% We SHOULD do this for the FINAL paper, not for the anon submission.
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% Relate to:
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% http://fc14.ifca.ai/papers/fc14_submission_124.pdf
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% Terminology:
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% - SEPA-transfer -- avoid 'SEPA transaction' as we use
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% 'transaction' already when we talk about taxable
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% transfers of Taler coins and database 'transactions'.
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% - wallet = coins at customer
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% - reserve = currency entrusted to exchange waiting for withdrawal
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% - deposit = SEPA to exchange
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% - withdrawal = exchange to customer
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% - spending = customer to merchant
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% - redeeming = merchant to exchange (and then exchange SEPA to merchant)
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% - refreshing = customer-exchange-customer
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% - dirty coin = coin with exposed public key
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% - fresh coin = coin that was refreshed or is new
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% - denomination key = exchange's online key used to (blindly) sign coin
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% - reserve key = key used to authorize withdrawals from a reserve
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% - message signing key = exchange's online key to sign exchange messages
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% - exchange master key = exchange's key used to sign other exchange keys
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% - owner = entity that knows coin private key
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% - transaction = coin ownership transfer that should be taxed
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% - sharing = coin copying that should not be taxed
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% FIXME: As a general comment, I think we're mixing the crypto stuff and the systems
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% stuff too much. It might be more appropriate to have to systems stuff in a separate
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% section, and the "pure" crypto stuff for the crypto people?
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\documentclass[sigconf, authordraft]{acmart}
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\usepackage{booktabs} % For formal tables
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\usepackage{tikz}
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\usetikzlibrary{shapes,arrows}
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\usetikzlibrary{positioning}
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\usetikzlibrary{calc}
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\usepackage{eurosym}
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\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
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\usepackage{verbatim}
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\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
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% Copyright
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%\setcopyright{none}
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%\setcopyright{acmcopyright}
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%\setcopyright{acmlicensed}
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\setcopyright{rightsretained}
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%\setcopyright{usgov}
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%\setcopyright{usgovmixed}
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%\setcopyright{cagov}
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%\setcopyright{cagovmixed}
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\newcommand\inecc{\in \mathbb{Z}_{|\mathbb{E}|}}
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\newcommand\inept{\in {\mathbb{E}}}
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\newcommand\inrsa{\in \mathbb{Z}_{|\mathrm{dom}(\FDH_K)|}}
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% DOI
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\acmDOI{10.475/123_4}
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% ISBN
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\acmISBN{123-4567-24-567/08/06}
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%Conference
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\acmConference[CCS'2017]{ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security}{October 2017}{%
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Dallas, Texas USA}
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\acmYear{2017}
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\copyrightyear{2017}
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\acmPrice{15.00}
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\acmSubmissionID{123-A12-B3}
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\begin{document}
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\title{Refreshing Coins for Giving Change and Refunds \\ in Chaum-style Anonymous Payment Systems}
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%\subtitle{Authors' names blinded for review}
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%\author{Ben Trovato}
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%\affiliation{%
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% \institution{Institute for Clarity in Documentation}
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% \streetaddress{P.O. Box 1212}
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% \city{Dublin}
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% \state{Ohio}
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% \postcode{43017-6221}
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%}
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%\email{trovato@corporation.com}
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%
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%
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%% The default list of authors is too long for headers}
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%\renewcommand{\shortauthors}{B. Trovato et al.}
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\author{Anonymized for blind review}
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\begin{abstract}
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This paper introduces {\em Taler}, a Chaum-style digital payment system that
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enables anonymous payments while ensuring that entities that receive
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payments are auditable. In Taler, customers can
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never defraud anyone, merchants can only fail to deliver the
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merchandise to the customer, and payment service providers are
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audited.
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All parties receive cryptographic evidence for all
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transactions; still, each party only receives the minimum information
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required to execute transactions. Enforcement of honest behavior is
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timely, and is at least as strict as with legacy credit card payment
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systems that do not provide for privacy.
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The key technical contribution underpinning Taler is a new {\em
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refresh protocol} which allows fractional payments and refunds while
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maintaining untraceability of the customer and unlinkability of
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transactions. The refresh protocol combines an
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efficient cut-and-choose mechanism with a {\em link} step to ensure
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that refreshing is not abused for transactional payments.
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We argue that Taler provides a secure digital payment system for modern
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liberal societies as it is a flexible, libre and efficient protocol
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and adequately balances the state's need for monetary control with the
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citizen's needs for private economic activity.
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\end{abstract}
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%
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% The code below should be generated by the tool at
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% http://dl.acm.org/ccs.cfm
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% Please copy and paste the code instead of the example below.
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%
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\begin{CCSXML}
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<ccs2012>
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<concept>
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<concept_id>10002978.10002991.10002994</concept_id>
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<concept_desc>Security and privacy~Pseudonymity, anonymity and untraceability</concept_desc>
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<concept_significance>300</concept_significance>
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</concept>
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<concept>
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<concept_id>10010405.10003550.10003551</concept_id>
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<concept_desc>Applied computing~Digital cash</concept_desc>
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<concept_significance>500</concept_significance>
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</concept>
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<concept>
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<concept_id>10003456.10003462.10003544.10003545</concept_id>
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<concept_desc>Social and professional topics~Taxation</concept_desc>
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<concept_significance>300</concept_significance>
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</concept>
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</ccs2012>
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\end{CCSXML}
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\ccsdesc[500]{Security and privacy~Pseudonymity, anonymity and untraceability}
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\ccsdesc[500]{Applied computing~Digital cash}
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\ccsdesc[300]{Social and professional topics~Taxation}
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\keywords{electronic cash, refreshing, refunds}
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\maketitle
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\section{Introduction}
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The design of payment systems shapes economies and societies. Strong,
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developed nation states have adopted highly transparent payment systems,
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such as the MasterCard and VisaCard credit card schemes and computerized
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bank transactions such as SWIFT. These systems enable mass surveillance
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by both governments and private companies. Aspects of this surveillance
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sometimes benefit society by providing information about tax evasion or
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crimes like extortion.
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%
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%In particular, bribery and corruption are limited to elites who can
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%afford to escape the dragnet.
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%
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At the other extreme, weaker developing nation states have economic
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activity based largely on coins, paper money or even barter. Here,
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the state is often unable to effectively monitor or tax economic
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activity, and this limits the ability of the state to shape the
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society.
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% If we remove the sentence above, this one also needs to go as it
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% is the dual...
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% As bribery is virtually impossible to detect, corruption is
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% widespread and not limited to social elites.
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%
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%
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% SHORTER: Zerocash need not be mentioned so early?
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% Zerocash~\cite{zerocash} is an example for translating an
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% anarchistic economy into the digital realm.
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This paper describes Taler, a simple and practical payment system
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which balances accountability and privacy.
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The Taler protocol is an improvement over Chaum's original
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design~\cite{chaum1983blind} and also follows Chaum's basic
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architecture of customer, merchant and exchange
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(Figure~\ref{fig:cmm}). The two designs share the key first step
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where the {\em customer} withdraws digital {\em coins} from the {\em
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exchange} with unlinkability provided via blind signatures. The
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coins can then be spent at a {\em merchant} who {\em deposits} them at
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the exchange. Taler uses online detection of double-spending and
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provides fair exchange and exculpability via cryptographic proofs.
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% Thus merchants are instantly assured that a transaction is valid.
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\begin{figure}[h]
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\centering
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\begin{tikzpicture}
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\tikzstyle{def} = [node distance= 2em and 6.5em, inner sep=1em, outer sep=.3em];
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\node (origin) at (0,0) {};
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\node (exchange) [def,above=of origin,draw]{Exchange};
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\node (customer) [def, draw, below left=of origin] {Customer};
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\node (merchant) [def, draw, below right=of origin] {Merchant};
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\node (auditor) [def, draw, above right=of origin]{Auditor};
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\tikzstyle{C} = [color=black, line width=1pt]
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\draw [<-, C] (customer) -- (exchange) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {withdraw coins};
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\draw [<-, C] (exchange) -- (merchant) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {deposit coins};
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\draw [<-, C] (merchant) -- (customer) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {spend coins};
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\draw [<-, C] (exchange) -- (auditor) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {verify};
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\end{tikzpicture}
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\caption{Taler's system model for the payment system is based on Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind}.}
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\label{fig:cmm}
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\end{figure}
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A key issue for an efficient Chaumian digital payment system is the
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need to provide change and existing systems for ``practical
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divisible'' electronic cash have transaction costs that are linear in
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the amount of value being transacted, sometimes hidden in the double
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spending detection logic of the payment service
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provider~\cite{martens2015practical}. The customer should also not be
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expected to withdraw exact change, as doing so reduces anonymity due
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to the obvious correlation.
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% FIXME: explain the logarithmic claim! It's only
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% true for a certain denomination structure.
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% This denomination structure potentially introduces privacy risks
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Taler solves the problem of giving change by introducing a new {\em
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refresh protocol} allowing for ``divisible'' transactions with
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amortized costs logarithmic in the amount of value being transacted.
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Using this protocol, a customer can obtain change or refunds in the
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form of fresh coins that other parties cannot link to the original
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transaction, the original coin, or each other. Additionally, the
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refresh protocol ensures that the change is owned by the same entity
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which owned the original coin.
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% Summarize key contributions...
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This paper presents the main Taler concepts and fundamental protocols,
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provides correctness arguments, gives an introduction to our freely
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available reference implementation. Initial experimental results show
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that the system performs well. Finally, we also discuss limitations
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and practical considerations resulting from the design.
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%\vspace{-0.3cm}
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\section{Related Work}
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%\vspace{-0.3cm}
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%\subsection{Blockchain-based currencies}
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% FIXME: SHORTEN. This is probably too much information for the audience, they
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% all know this
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In recent years, a class of decentralized electronic payment systems,
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based on collectively recorded and verified append-only public
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ledgers, have gained immense popularity. The most well-known protocol
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in this class is Bitcoin~\cite{nakamoto2008bitcoin}. The key
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contribution of blockchain-based protocols is that they dispense with
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the need for a central, trusted authority. Yet, there are several
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major irredeemable problems inherent in their designs:
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\begin{itemize}
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\item The computational puzzles solved by Bitcoin nodes with the purpose
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of securing the blockchain consume a considerable amount of energy.
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So Bitcoin is an environmentally irresponsible design.
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\item Bitcoin transactions have pseudonymous recipients, making taxation
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hard to systematically enforce.
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\item Bitcoin introduces a new currency, creating additional
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financial risks from currency fluctuation.
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\item Anyone can start an alternative Bitcoin transaction chain,
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called an AltCoin, and, if successful, reap the benefits of the low
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cost to initially create coins cheaply as the proof-of-work
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difficulty adjusts to the computation power of all
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miners in the network. As participants are de facto investors,
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AltCoins can become a form of Ponzi scheme.
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% As a result, dozens of
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% AltCoins have been created, often without any significant changes to the
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% technology. A large number of AltCoins creates additional overheads for
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% currency exchange and exacerbates the problems with currency fluctuations.
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\end{itemize}
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Bitcoin also lacks anonymity, as all Bitcoin transactions are recorded
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for eternity, which can enable identification of users. Anonymous
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payment systems based on Bitcoin such as CryptoNote~\cite{cryptonote}
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(Monero), Zerocash~\cite{zerocash} (ZCash) and BOLT~\cite{BOLT}
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exacerbate the design issues we mention above. These systems exploit the
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blockchain's decentralized nature to escape anti-money laundering
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regulation~\cite{molander1998cyberpayments} as they provide anonymous,
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disintermediated transactions.
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Unlike Taler, Zerocash hides transacted amounts as well as both the
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sender and receiver, giving it a larger anonymity set than Taler under
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equal usage levels. However, a Taler exchange can process transactions many
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orders of magnitude faster and more cheaply than any blockchain-based
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cryptocurrency like Zerocash. It follows that, assuming reasonable
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adoption levels for both, Taler can yield stronger anonymity for
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ordinary purchases, although this depends upon adoption.
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Also, Zerocash should retain an advantage for large transactions that
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never get cashed out into another currency.
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In addition, Zerocash's anonymity for the receiver facilitates illegal
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activities like extortion, money laundering, and tax evasion.
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BOLT~\cite{BOLT} is a proposed off-chain payment channel inspired by
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the Lightning Network \cite{LightningNetwork}. In essence, BOLT is
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an e-cash system designed to operate in parallel with Zerocash, along
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with a second similar system. Aside from using Zerocash for resolving
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disputes, and ultimately transferring coins, BOLT sacrifices some of
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the customer anonymity provided by the e-cash primitives so that the
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party acting as the exchange can be an arbitrary miner but cannot
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defraud the customer. BOLT asserts that sacrificing customer anonymity
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in this way is acceptable given Zerocash's strong anonymity properties,
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but the authors do propose using it outside of Zerocash.
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In general, these off-chain payment channels, like BOLT and the
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Lightning Network, improve the blockchain based payment schemes by
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centralizing payment processing, but they remain orders of magnitude
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more costly than Taler with the same degree of centralization.
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In addition, they require nodes act far more like payment processors
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than like conventional miners, potentially exposing miners to legal
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risks, not unlike the financial violations for which Ripple was fined
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\cite{RippleFined:ArsTechnica}. Taler is explicitly designed to help
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a Taler exchange navigate these legal risks.
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GreenCoinX\footnote{\url{https://www.greencoinx.com/}} is a more
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recent AltCoin where the company promises to identify the owner of
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each coin via e-mail addresses and phone numbers. While it is unclear
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from their technical description how this identification would be
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enforced against a determined adversary, the resulting payment system
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would also merely impose a financial panopticon on a Bitcoin-style
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money supply and transaction model.
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%\subsection{Chaum-style electronic cash}
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Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind} proposed a digital payment system that
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would provide some customer anonymity while disclosing the identity of
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the merchants. DigiCash, a commercial implementation of Chaum's
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proposal ultimately failed to be widely adopted. In our assessment,
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key reasons for DigiCash's failure include:
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\begin{itemize}
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\item The use of patents to protect the technology; a payment system
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should be free software (libre) to have a chance for widespread adoption.
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\item Support for payments to off-line merchants, and thus deferred
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detection of double-spending, requires the exchange to attempt to
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recover funds from delinquent customers via the legal system.
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Any system that fails to be self-enforcing creates a major
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business risk for the exchange and merchants.
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% In 1983, there were merchants without network connectivity, making that
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% feature relevant, but today network connectivity is feasible for most
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% merchants, and saves both the exchange and merchants the business risks
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% associated with deferred fraud detection.
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\item % In addition to the risk of legal disputes wh fraudulent
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% merchants and customers,
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Chaum's published design does not clearly
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limit the financial damage an exchange might suffer from the
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disclosure of its private online signing key.
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\item Chaum did not support fractional payments or refunds without
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weakening customer anonymity.
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%, and Brand's
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% extensions for fractional payments broke unlinkability and thus
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% limited anonymity.
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% \item Chaum's system was implemented at a time where the US market
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% was still dominated by paper checks and the European market was
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% fragmented into dozens of currencies. Today, SEPA provides a
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% unified currency and currency transfer method for most of Europe,
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% significantly lowering the barrier to entry into this domain for
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% a larger market.
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\end{itemize}
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To our knowledge, the only publicly available effort to implement
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Chaum's idea is Opencoin~\cite{dent2008extensions}. However, Opencoin
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is neither actively developed nor used, and it is not clear
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to what degree the implementation is even complete. Only a partial
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description of the Opencoin protocol is available to date.
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% FIXME: ask OpenCoin dev's about this! Then make statement firmer!
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% FIXME: not only by brands. this formulation sounds like
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% we're unaware of the huge body of work in the area that is still growing.
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Chaum's original digital cash system~\cite{chaum1983blind} was
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extended by Brands~\cite{brands1993efficient} with the ability to {\em
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divide} coins and thus spend certain fractions of a coin using
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restrictive blind signatures. Restrictive blind signatures create
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privacy risks: if a transaction is interrupted, then any coins sent
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to the merchant become tainted, but may never arrive or be spent.
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It becomes tricky to extract the value of the tainted coins without
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linking to the aborted transaction and risking deanonymization.
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Ian Goldberg's HINDE system allowed the merchant to provide change,
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but the mechanism could be abused to hide income from
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taxation.\footnote{Description based on personal communication. HINDE
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was never published.}
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In~\cite{brands1993efficient}, $k$-show signatures were proposed to
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achieve divisibility for coins. However, with $k$-show signatures
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multiple transactions can be linked to each other.
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Performing fractional payments using $k$-show signatures is also
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rather expensive.
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In pure blind signature based schemes like Taler, withdrawal and spend
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operations require bandwidth logarithmic in the value being withdrawn
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or spent. In~\cite{Camenisch05compacte-cash}, there is a zero-knowledge
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scheme that improves upon this, requiring only constant bandwidth for
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withdrawals and spend operations, but unfortunately the exchanges' storage and
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search costs become linear in the total value of all transactions.
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%In principle, one could correct this by adding multiple denominations,
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%an open problem stated already in~\cite{Camenisch05compacte-cash}.
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% NO: he cannot give change, so that does not really work!
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As described, the scheme employs offline double spending protection,
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which inherently makes it fragile and creates an unnecessary
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deanonymization risk (see Section~\ref{sec:offline}).
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%We believe the offline protection from double
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%spending could be removed, thus switching the scheme to only protection
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%against online double spending, like Taler.
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% TOO much detail...
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%
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%Along with fixing these two issues, an interesting applied research project
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%would be to add partial spending and a form of Taler's refresh protocol.
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%At present, we feel these relatively new cryptographic techniques incur
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%unacceptable financial risks to the exchange, due to underdeveloped
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%implementation practice.
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%
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% SHORTER: Maybe some of the above could be thinned since
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% they do not know much about Taler's refresh protocol yet.
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% -- yeah, in particular the feeling/speculative parts are not needed...
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%In this vein, there are pure also zero-knowledge proof based schemes
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%like~\cite{ST99}, and subsequently Zerocash~\cite{zerocash}, and maybe
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%variations on BOLT~\cite{BOLT}, that avoid using any denomination-like
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%constructs, slightly reducing metadata leakage. At present, these all
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%incur excessive bandwidth or computational costs however.
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% -- commented out, seems excessive.
|
|
|
|
%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: If we ever add peppercoin stuff, cite Matt Green paper
|
|
% and talk about economics when encoding a punishment-coin
|
|
% as the identity, with limited ticket lifespan
|
|
|
|
%\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.
|
|
|
|
The use of refunds for fractional payments has been suggested in the context of
|
|
payment systems for public transit fees \cite{rupp2013p4r}. This approach
|
|
relies on 2-showable coins that can be used one time for fractional spending
|
|
and another time for refunding the remaining amount without losing anonymity.
|
|
Unfortunately this approach cannot be used for a general-purpose payment
|
|
system, since the refund operation of Rupp et al. allows transferring money
|
|
in a way that hides income from taxation. Refunding a coin into a wallet that
|
|
didn't withdraw the coin is possible in their system, but consitutes a
|
|
transaction between two parties that is not recognized by the system for the
|
|
purpose of income taxation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
%\vspace{-0.3cm}
|
|
\section{Design}
|
|
%\vspace{-0.3cm}
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
To pay, the customer {\em spends} digital coins at the merchant. 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 withdraw anonymous digital coins from the
|
|
customer's financial reserves, and for enabling the merchant to
|
|
deposit digital coins in return for receiving credit at the merchant's
|
|
financial reserve. In addition, Taler includes an \emph{auditor} who
|
|
assures customers and merchants that the exchange operates correctly.
|
|
|
|
%\vspace{-0.3cm}
|
|
\subsection{Security considerations}
|
|
%\vspace{-0.3cm}
|
|
|
|
As a payment system, Taler naturally needs to make sure that coins are
|
|
unforgeable and prevent double-spending. More precisely, as the same
|
|
coin is allowed to be involved in multiple operations, Taler needs to
|
|
ensure that the amounts spent per coin remain below the denomination
|
|
value and amounts credited to the coin from refunds. Furthermore,
|
|
transactions should be unlinkable; in particular, if a coin has been
|
|
partially spent or if a transaction was aborted, Taler must provide a
|
|
mechanism for customers to spend the remaining value in another
|
|
transaction that remains unlinkable to the first transaction. Finally,
|
|
this mechanism must not introduce a new loophole that might be used to
|
|
hide transactions in a way that would enable tax-evasion.
|
|
|
|
As a practical system, Taler needs to be concerned with transient
|
|
network failures or loss of power. Thus, it must be possible to
|
|
resume protocols and recover from such failures at any point in time,
|
|
without any party suffering financial losses. We require that parties
|
|
are able to securely persist information and assume that after
|
|
errors they can resume from the previous state that was persisted.
|
|
We will explicitly state in the protocol when what state has
|
|
to be persisted. Participants that fail to recover data they were
|
|
expected to persist may suffer financial losses in proportion to the
|
|
value of the transactions involved.
|
|
|
|
Taler assumes that each participant has full control over their
|
|
system. We assume the contact information of the exchange is known to
|
|
both customer and merchant from the start, including that the customer
|
|
can authenticate the merchant, for example by using X.509
|
|
certificates~\cite{rfc6818}. A Taler 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 the customer
|
|
receives cryptographic evidence of the contract and the associated
|
|
payment. We assume each Taler customer has an anonymous
|
|
bi-directional channel, such as Tor, to communicate with both the
|
|
exchange and the merchant.
|
|
|
|
A Taler 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. An exchange's
|
|
signing keys expire regularly, allowing the exchange to eventually
|
|
destroy the corresponding accumulated cryptographic proofs, and
|
|
limiting the exchange's financial liability.
|
|
|
|
On the cryptographic side, a Taler exchange demands that coins use a
|
|
full domain hash (FDH) to make so-called ``one-more forgery'' attacks
|
|
provably hard, assuming the RSA known-target inversion problem is
|
|
hard~\cite[Theorem 12]{RSA-HDF-KTIvCTI}. For a withdrawn coin,
|
|
violating the customers anonymity cryptographically requires recognizing
|
|
a random blinding factor from a random element of the group of
|
|
integers modulo the denomination key's RSA modulus, which appears
|
|
impossible even with a quantum computers. For a refreshed coin,
|
|
unlinkability requires the hardness of the discrete logarithm for
|
|
Curve25519.
|
|
|
|
The cut-and-choose protocol prevents merchants and customers from
|
|
conspiring to conceal a merchants income. We assume that the maximum
|
|
tax rate is below $1/\kappa$, and that expected transaction losses of
|
|
a factor of $\kappa$ for tax evasion are thus unacceptable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Taxability and Entities}
|
|
|
|
Taler ensures that the state can tax {\em transactions}. We must,
|
|
however, clarify what constitutes a transaction that can be taxed.
|
|
% As we believe citizens should be in control of their computing, as well as for 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 even more
|
|
extreme measures.
|
|
% SHORTER:
|
|
% including preventing them from communicating with anyone but
|
|
% the exchange terminal during withdrawal.
|
|
% FIXME: Oddly phrased:
|
|
% 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.
|
|
|
|
% SHORTER: There might be a shorter way to say this and the previous
|
|
% paragraph together, but now I see why they were kept apart.
|
|
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 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 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 who withdrew enough coin of
|
|
given denominations.
|
|
There are naturally risks that the business operation that the
|
|
merchant runs on behalf of the customer
|
|
may require the merchant to learn 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; 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}. So
|
|
while the exchange does know their customer (KYC), it
|
|
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 untraceability 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 the full domain hash (FDH)
|
|
of the coin's public key. The exchange has multiple RSA
|
|
{\em denomination key} pairs available for blind-signing coins of
|
|
different values.
|
|
|
|
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. If a private denomination key were to be
|
|
compromised, the exchange can detect this once more coins are redeemed
|
|
than the total that was signed into existence using that denomination
|
|
key. In this case, the exchange can allow authentic customers to
|
|
redeem their unspent coins that were signed with the compromised
|
|
private key, while refusing further deposits involving coins signed by
|
|
the compromised denomination key (see Section~\ref{sec:payback}).
|
|
As a result, the financial damage
|
|
of losing a private signing key is limited to at most the amount
|
|
originally signed with that key, and denomination key rotation can be
|
|
used to bound that risk.
|
|
|
|
We 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
|
|
with validity periods that imply sufficiently strong anonymity sets.
|
|
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 reserve 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 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 and the signature over the coin's public
|
|
key by an exchange's denomination key enables spending 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.
|
|
|
|
% FIXME: This paragraph could likely be removed and be replaced
|
|
% by the proof if we have space.
|
|
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}
|
|
|
|
\def\KDF{\textrm{KDF}}
|
|
\def\FDH{\textrm{FDH}}
|
|
|
|
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. A summary of the notation used is in Appendix~\ref{sec:notation}.
|
|
|
|
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 decisions
|
|
about individual exchanges. Instead, they need only select the auditors.
|
|
Auditors must sign all the exchange's public keys.
|
|
|
|
As we are dealing with financial transactions, we explicitly describe
|
|
whenever entities need to safely write data to persistent storage.
|
|
As long as the data persists, the protocol can be safely
|
|
resumed at any step. Persisting data is cumulative, that is an
|
|
additional persist operation does not erase the previously stored
|
|
information. Keys and thus coins always have a well-known expiration
|
|
date; information persisted 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?
|
|
|
|
$S_K$ denotes RSA signing with denomination key $K$. Signatures $S_X$
|
|
use EdDSA~\cite{eddsa,rfc8032} over elliptic curve $\mathbb{E}$ for
|
|
all other types of keys $X \not= K$. $G$ denotes the generator of
|
|
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 $K_p$.
|
|
We use $\FDH_K$ to denote a full-domain hash where the domain is the
|
|
modulos of the public key $K_p$. Now the customer carries out the
|
|
following interaction with the exchange:
|
|
|
|
% FIXME: These steps occur at very different points in time, so probably
|
|
% they should be restructured into more of a protocol description.
|
|
% It does create some confusion, like is a reserve key semi-ephemeral
|
|
% like a linking key?
|
|
|
|
\begin{enumerate}
|
|
\item The customer randomly generates:
|
|
\begin{itemize}
|
|
\item reserve key $W := (w_s,W_p)$ with private key $w_s \inecc$ and public key $W_p := w_sG \inept$,
|
|
\item coin key $C := (c_s,C_p)$ with private key $c_s$ and public key $C_p := c_s G \inept$,
|
|
\item RSA blinding factor $b \inrsa$.
|
|
\end{itemize}
|
|
The customer first persists\footnote{When we say ``persist'', we mean that the value
|
|
is stored in such a way that it can be recovered after a system crash, and
|
|
the protocol execution can be re-tried from a checkpoint
|
|
without losing money sent in the next step.} $\langle W, C, b \rangle$.
|
|
Then 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 reserve $W_p$
|
|
with the respective amount in its database.
|
|
\item
|
|
The customer computes $B := B_b(\FDH_K(C_p))$ and sends $S_W(B)$ to
|
|
the exchange to request withdrawal of $C$; here, $B_b$ denotes
|
|
Chaum-style blinding with blinding factor $b$.
|
|
\item
|
|
The exchange checks its database if there is an existing withdraw record $\langle S_W(B), x \rangle$
|
|
with existing withdraw response $x$; in this case it sends back $x$.\\
|
|
Otherwise 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
|
|
$\langle S_W(B), S_K(B) \rangle$ in its database
|
|
for future reference,
|
|
\item deducts the amount corresponding to $K$ from the reserve,
|
|
\end{enumerate}
|
|
and then sends Chaum-style blind signature $S_K(B)$ 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.
|
|
\item The customer computes the unblinded signature $U_b(S_K(B))$ and
|
|
verifies that $S_K(\FDH_K(C_p)) = U_b(S_K(B))$.
|
|
Finally the customer persists the coin $\langle S_K(\FDH_K(C_p)), c_s \rangle$
|
|
in their local wallet.
|
|
\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, usually because
|
|
the exchange is audited by an auditor that is trusted by the merchant.
|
|
Merchants are identified by their public key $M_p$ which the
|
|
customer's wallet learns through the merchant's Web page, which itself
|
|
should be authenticated with X.509c.
|
|
|
|
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 $\widetilde{C} := S_K(\FDH_K(C_p))$
|
|
where $K$ is the exchange's denomination 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 $\vec{X} := \langle X_1, \ldots, X_n \rangle$ denote the list of
|
|
exchanges accepted by the merchant where each $X_j$ is a exchange's
|
|
public key.
|
|
\item
|
|
The merchant creates a signed contract
|
|
\begin{equation*}
|
|
\mathcal{A} := S_M(m, f, a, H(p, r), \vec{X})
|
|
\end{equation*}
|
|
where $m$ is an identifier for this transaction, $f$ is the price of the offer,
|
|
and $a$ is data relevant
|
|
to the contract indicating which services or goods the merchant will
|
|
deliver to the customer, including the merchant specific URI for the payment.
|
|
$p$ is the merchant's payment information (e.g. his IBAN number), and
|
|
$r$ is a random nonce. The merchant persists $\langle \mathcal{A} \rangle$
|
|
and sends $\mathcal{A}$ to the customer.
|
|
\item
|
|
The customer should already possess a coin $\widetilde{C}$ issued by a exchange that is
|
|
accepted by the merchant, meaning $K$ of $\widetilde{C}$ should be publicly signed by
|
|
some $X_j$ from $\vec{X}$, and has a value $\geq f$.
|
|
% \item
|
|
Let $X_j$ be the exchange which signed $\widetilde{C}$ with $K$.
|
|
The customer generates a \emph{deposit-permission}
|
|
$$\mathcal{D} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, m, f, H(a), H(p,r), M_p)$$
|
|
and sends $\langle \mathcal{D}, X_j\rangle$ to the merchant. \label{step:first-post}
|
|
\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 persists $\langle \mathcal{D} \rangle$
|
|
and signs a message affirming the deposit operation was successful.
|
|
\item
|
|
The merchant persists the response 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{step:first-post}, subsequent
|
|
transactions with the same coin could be linked to this operation.
|
|
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 following 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 $\widetilde{C}$. To
|
|
simplify the description, this section describes the case where one
|
|
{\em unspent} dirty coin (for example, from an aborted transaction) is
|
|
exchanged for a fresh coin of the same denomination. We have again
|
|
simplified the exposition by creating only one fresh coin. In practice,
|
|
Taler uses a natural extension where multiple fresh coins of possibly
|
|
many different denominations are generated at the same time. For this,
|
|
the wallet simply specifies an array of coins wherever the protocol
|
|
below specifies only a single coin. The different denominations of the
|
|
fresh coins must be chosen by the wallet such that their value adds up
|
|
to the remaining balance of the dirty coin. This way, refreshing
|
|
enables giving precise change matching any amount, assuming the
|
|
exchange offers an adequate value range in its denominations.
|
|
|
|
In the protocol, $\kappa \ge 2$ is a security parameter for the
|
|
cut-and-choose part of the protocol. $\kappa = 3$ is actually
|
|
perfectly sufficient in most cases in practice, as the cut-and-choose
|
|
protocol does not need to provide cryptographic security: If the
|
|
maximum applicable tax is less than $\frac{2}{3}$, then $\kappa = 3$
|
|
ensures that cheating results in a negative financial return on
|
|
average as $\kappa - 1$ out of $\kappa$ attempts to hide from taxation
|
|
are detected and penalized by a total loss. This makes our use of
|
|
cut-and-choose practical and efficient, orders of magnitude faster
|
|
than comparable proposed uses of zk-SNARKs in ZeroCash~\cite{AccountableZerocash}.
|
|
% and orders of magnitude more more bandwidth efficient than
|
|
% comparable proposed uses of zero-knowledge proof in BOLT~\cite{BOLT}.
|
|
|
|
% FIXME: I'm explicit about the rounds in postquantum.tex
|
|
|
|
\begin{enumerate}
|
|
\item %[POST {\tt /refresh/melt}]
|
|
For each $i = 1,\ldots,\kappa$, the customer randomly generates
|
|
a transfer private key $t^{(i)}_s \inecc$ and computes
|
|
\begin{enumerate}
|
|
\item the transfer public key $T^{(i)}_p := t^{(i)}_s G \inept$ and
|
|
\item the new coin secret seed $L^{(i)} := H(c'_s T_p^{(i)})$.
|
|
\end{enumerate}
|
|
We have computed $L^{(i)}$ as a Diffie-Hellman shared secret between
|
|
the transfer key pair $T^{(i)} := \left(t^{(i)}_s,T^{(i)}_p\right)$
|
|
and old coin key pair $C' := \left(c_s', C_p'\right)$;
|
|
as a result, $L^{(i)} = H(t^{(i)}_s C'_p)$ also holds.
|
|
Now the customer applies key derivation functions $\KDF_{\textrm{blinding}}$ and $\KDF_{\textrm{Ed25519}}$ to $L^{(i)}$ to generate
|
|
\begin{enumerate}
|
|
\item a blinding factor $b^{(i)} = \FDH_K(\KDF_{\textrm{blinding}}(L^{(i)}))$.
|
|
\item $c_s^{(i)} = \KDF_{\textrm{Ed25519}}(L^{(i)})$
|
|
\end{enumerate}
|
|
Now the customer can compute her new coin key pair
|
|
$C^{(i)} := \left(c_s^{(i)}, C_p^{(i)}\right)$
|
|
where $C^{(i)}_p := c^{(i)}_s G$.
|
|
|
|
The customer persists $\langle C', \vec{t}\rangle$ where
|
|
$\vec{t} = \langle t^{(1)}_s, \ldots, t^{(\kappa)}_s \rangle$.
|
|
We observe that $t^{(i)}_s$ suffices to regenerate $C^{(i)}$ and $b^{(i)}$
|
|
using the same key derivation functions.
|
|
|
|
% \item
|
|
The customer computes $B^{(i)} := B_{b^{(i)}}(\FDH_K(C^{(i)}_p))$
|
|
for $i \in \{1,\ldots,\kappa\}$ and sends a signed commitment
|
|
$S_{C'}(\vec{B}, \vec{T_p})$ to the exchange.
|
|
\item % [200 OK / 409 CONFLICT]
|
|
The exchange checks that $C'_p$ is a valid coin of sufficient balance
|
|
to cover the value of the fresh coins to be generated and prevent
|
|
double-spending. Then,
|
|
the exchange generates a random $\gamma$ with $1 \le \gamma \le \kappa$ and
|
|
marks $C'_p$ as spent by persisting the \emph{refresh-record}
|
|
$\mathcal{F} = \langle C', \gamma, S_{C'}(\vec{B}, \vec{T_p}) \rangle$.
|
|
Auditing processes should assure that $\gamma$ is unpredictable until
|
|
this time to prevent the exchange from assisting tax evasion. \\
|
|
%
|
|
The exchange sends $S_{K'}(C'_p, \gamma)$ to the customer where
|
|
$K'$ is the exchange's message signing key, thereby committing the exchange to $\gamma$.
|
|
\item % [POST {\tt /refresh/reveal}]
|
|
The customer persists $\langle C', S_K(C'_p, \gamma) \rangle$.
|
|
Also, the customer assembles
|
|
$\mathfrak{R} := \left(t_s^{(i)}\right)_{i \ne \gamma}$
|
|
and sends $S_{C'}(\mathfrak{R})$ to the exchange.
|
|
\item %[200 OK / 400 BAD REQUEST] % \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}{3.5cm}
|
|
\begin{align*}
|
|
\overline{L^{(i)}} :&= H(t_s^{(i)} C_p') \\
|
|
\overline{c_s^{(i)}} :&= \KDF_{\textrm{Ed25519}}(\overline{L^{(i)}}) \\
|
|
\overline{C^{(i)}_p} :&= \overline{c_s^{(i)}} G
|
|
\end{align*}
|
|
\end{minipage}
|
|
\begin{minipage}{3cm}
|
|
\begin{align*}
|
|
\overline{T_p^{(i)}} :&= t_s^{(i)} G \\
|
|
\overline{b^{(i)}} :&= \FDH_K(\KDF_{\textrm{blinding}}(\overline{L^{(i)}})) \\
|
|
\overline{B^{(i)}} :&= B_{\overline{b^{(i)}}}(\FDH_K\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[200 OK / 409 CONFLICT] % \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}
|
|
|
|
% FIXME: Maybe explain why we don't need n-m refreshing?
|
|
% FIXME: What are the privacy implication of not having n-m refresh?
|
|
% What about the resulting number of large coins, doesn't this reduce the anonymity set?
|
|
|
|
%\subsection{N-to-M Refreshing}
|
|
%
|
|
%TODO: Explain, especially subtleties regarding session key / the spoofing attack that requires signature.
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Linking}\label{subsec:linking}
|
|
|
|
% FIXME: What is \mathtt{link} ?
|
|
|
|
For a coin that was successfully refreshed, the exchange responds to a
|
|
request $S_{C'}(\mathtt{link})$ with $(T^{(\gamma)}_p, \widetilde{C})$.
|
|
%
|
|
This allows the owner of the melted coin to derive 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 secretly 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{Refunds}
|
|
|
|
The refresh protocol offers an easy way to enable refunds to
|
|
customers, even if they are anonymous. Refunds are 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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
\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 mismatch 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, or simply no
|
|
response. The appropriate behavior for the client is to automatically
|
|
retry a few times with back-off. If this still fails, the user can,
|
|
depending on the type of operation, either attempt to recover the now
|
|
dirty coin using the refresh protocol, or notify the auditor 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.
|
|
|
|
\section{Correctness}
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Taxability arguments}
|
|
|
|
We assume the exchange operates honestly when discussing taxability.
|
|
We feel this assumption is warranted mostly because a Taler exchange
|
|
requires licenses to operate as a financial institution, which it
|
|
risks loosing if it knowingly facilitates tax evasion.
|
|
We also expect an auditor monitors the exchange similarly to how
|
|
government regulators monitor financial institutions.
|
|
In fact, our auditor software component gives the auditor read access
|
|
to the exchange's database, and carries out test operations anonymously,
|
|
which expands its power over conventional auditors.
|
|
|
|
\begin{proposition}
|
|
Assuming the exchange operates the refresh protocol honestly,
|
|
a customer operating the refresh protocol dishonestly expects to
|
|
loose $1 - {1 \over \kappa}$ of the value of their coins.
|
|
\end{proposition}
|
|
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
An honest exchange keeps any funds being refreshed if the reveal
|
|
phase is never carried out, does not match the commitment, or shows
|
|
an incorrect commitment. As a result, a customer dishonestly
|
|
refreshing a coin looses their money if they have more than one
|
|
dishonest commitment. If they make exactly one dishonest
|
|
commitment, they have a $1 \over \kappa$ chance of their
|
|
dishonest commitment being selected for the refresh.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
We say a coin $C$ is {\em controlled} by a user if the user's wallet knows
|
|
its secret scalar $c_s$, the signature $S$ of the appropriate denomination
|
|
key on its public key $C_s$, and the residual value of the coin.
|
|
|
|
We assume the wallet cannot loose knowledge of a particular coin's
|
|
key material, and the wallet can query the exchange to learn the
|
|
residual value of the coin, so a wallet cannot loose control of
|
|
a coin. A wallet may loose the monetary value associated with a coin
|
|
if another wallet spends it however.
|
|
|
|
We say a user Alice {\em owns} a coin $C$ if only Alice's wallets can
|
|
gain control of $C$ using standard interactions with the exchange.
|
|
In other words, ownership means exclusive control not just in the
|
|
present, but in the future even if another user interacts with the
|
|
exchange.
|
|
|
|
\begin{theorem}
|
|
Let $C$ denote a coin controlled by users Alice and Bob.
|
|
Suppose Bob creates a fresh coin $C'$ from $C$ following the refresh protocol.
|
|
Assuming the exchange and Bob operated the refresh protocol correctly,
|
|
and that the exchange continues to operate the linking protocol
|
|
in \S\ref{subsec:linking} correctly, then
|
|
Alice can gain control of $C'$ using the linking protocol.
|
|
\end{theorem}
|
|
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
Alice may run the linking protocol to obtain all transfer keys $T^i$,
|
|
bindings $B^i$ associated to $C$, and those coins denominations,
|
|
including the $T'$ for $C'$.
|
|
|
|
We assumed both the exchange and Bob operated the refresh protocol
|
|
correctly, so now $c_s T'$ is the seed from which $C'$ was generated.
|
|
Alice rederives both $c_s$ and the blinding factor to unblind the
|
|
denomination key signature on $C'$. Alice finally asks the exchange
|
|
for the residual value on $C'$ and runs the linking protocol to
|
|
determine if it was refreshed too.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
As discussed in the next subsection, there are serious privacy risks
|
|
from coins obtained through the linking protocol, so we must not
|
|
implement the linking protocol in the wallet ourselves.
|
|
We assert that Taler is taxable on the grounds that any user who
|
|
modified their wallet to operate dishonestly could similarly modify
|
|
it to use the linking protocol to cheat other users.
|
|
|
|
Although this claims holds broadly, one could envision violating it
|
|
with advanced forms of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) that
|
|
exploited trusted code execution. We discount this threat as being
|
|
similar to the withdrawal loophole, but we recommend that hardware
|
|
DRM be outlawed for posing a threat to the state's tax base, along
|
|
with more serious concerns.
|
|
|
|
\begin{corollary}
|
|
Assuming the user can operate their computer freely,
|
|
abusing the refresh protocol to transfer ownership has an
|
|
expected loss of $1 - \frac{1}{\kappa}$ of the transaction value.
|
|
\end{corollary}
|
|
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Privacy arguments}
|
|
|
|
The {\em linking problem} for blind signature is,
|
|
if given coin creation transcripts and possibly fewer
|
|
coin deposit transcripts for coins from the creation transcripts,
|
|
then produce a corresponding creation and deposit transcript.
|
|
|
|
We say an adversary {\em links} coins if it has a non-negligible
|
|
advantage in solving the linking problem, when given the private
|
|
keys of the exchange.
|
|
|
|
In Taler, there are two forms of coin creation transcripts,
|
|
withdrawal and refresh.
|
|
|
|
\begin{lemma}
|
|
If there are no refresh operations, any adversary with an
|
|
advantage in linking coins is polynomially equivalent to an
|
|
adversary with the same advantage in recognizing blinding factors.
|
|
\end{lemma}
|
|
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
Let $n$ denote the RSA modulus of the denomination key.
|
|
Also let $d$ and $e$ denote the private and public exponents, respectively.
|
|
In effect, coin withdrawal transcripts consist of numbers
|
|
$b m^d \mod n$ where $m$ is the FDH of the coin's public key
|
|
and $b$ is the blinding factor, while coin deposits transcripts
|
|
consist of only $m^d \mod n$.
|
|
|
|
If the adversary can link coins then they can compute the blinding
|
|
factors as $b m^d / m^d \mod n$. Conversely, if the adversary can
|
|
recognize blinding factors then they link coins after first computing
|
|
$b_{i,j} = b_i m_i^d / m_j^d \mod n$ for all $i,j$.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
% As a corollary, Taler would have information theoretic privacy
|
|
% if the blinding factors were truly random and
|
|
% refresh operations were disallowed.
|
|
|
|
We actually generate blinding factors using an FDH built by
|
|
running HMAC-SHA512 on a secret 256 bit seed and a count until
|
|
it outputs a number $b$ less than $n$ satisfying $\gcd(b,n) = 1$.
|
|
|
|
\begin{corollary}
|
|
Assuming no refresh operation,
|
|
any adversary with an advantage for linking Taler coins gives rise
|
|
to an adversary with an advantage for recognizing our SHA512 output.
|
|
\end{corollary}
|
|
|
|
Importantly, we do not consider coins about which wallet learns
|
|
through the linking protocol given in \S\ref{subsec:linking}.
|
|
An honest participant never needs to run the linking protocol,
|
|
so these coins should not appear, and we do not count them in
|
|
the adversary's advantage. If linked coins do appear, then
|
|
they cannot be spent anonymously because the other user controlling
|
|
the coin can learn about any transactions involving these coins.
|
|
Worse still, the exchange itself could issue tagged coins through
|
|
the linking protocol. As a result, we limit the refresh protocol to
|
|
a feature offered by the exchange, and test it from the auditor, but
|
|
do not use it in any real Taler protocols and do not implement it in
|
|
the wallet. We observed in the previous subsection that merely
|
|
the threat of the linking protocol suffices for taxability.
|
|
|
|
\smallskip
|
|
|
|
We will now consider the impact of the refresh operation.
|
|
For the sake of the argument, we will first consider an earlier
|
|
encryption-based version of the protocol in which a refresh operation
|
|
consisted of $\kappa$ normal coin withdrawals and the commitment
|
|
consisted of the blinding factors and private keys of the fresh coins
|
|
encrypted using the secret $t^{(i)} C_s$ where $C_s = c_s G$ of the
|
|
dirty coin $C$ being refreshed and $T^{(i)} = t^{(i)} G$ is the
|
|
transfer key.
|
|
%
|
|
In Taler, we replaced this encryption-based scheme with the current
|
|
KDF-based scheme, as the earlier scheme required more storage space,
|
|
an additional encryption primitive, and exposed more random number
|
|
generator output from the wallet.
|
|
|
|
\begin{proposition}
|
|
Assume the encryption used is semantically (IND-CPA) secure,
|
|
given the security of a Diffie-Hellman key exchange over curve25519.
|
|
Assume also the independence of $c_s$, $t$, and the new coins' key
|
|
materials.
|
|
Then any probabilistic polynomial time (PPT) adversary with an
|
|
advantage for linking Taler coins gives rise to an adversary with
|
|
an advantage for recognizing our SHA512 output.
|
|
\end{proposition}
|
|
% TODO: Is independence here too strong?
|
|
|
|
In fact, the exchange can launch a chosen ciphertext attack against
|
|
a dishonest customer who uses the linking protocol. We ignore this
|
|
because we exclude such coins from our privacy garentees and the
|
|
exchange can even invent coins whole cloth.
|
|
|
|
We shall now replace the encrpytion phase with a KDF as in our actual
|
|
protocol, except we treat the KDF as a random oracle~\cite{BR-RandomOracles}.
|
|
%
|
|
In fact, we expect doing so to increase practical security as in
|
|
\cite{Abdalla2000}, and adding the random oracle assumption need not
|
|
reduce security if it focuses more attention on the usage of hash
|
|
functions throughout the protocol.
|
|
|
|
\begin{theorem}
|
|
In the random oracle model, any PPT adversary with an advantage
|
|
in linking Taler coins has an advantage in breaking elliptic curve
|
|
Diffie-Hellman key exchange on curve25519.
|
|
\end{theorem}
|
|
% TODO: IND-CPA again anywhere?
|
|
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
We work with the usual instantiation of the random oracle model as
|
|
returning a random string and placing it into a database for future
|
|
queries.
|
|
% TODO: this paragraph seems superfluous since its kinda sucked into
|
|
% the reference.
|
|
|
|
We have a shared secret $k$ derived from an ECDH from which we derive
|
|
the encryption key used in the old protocol to encrypt the new coin's
|
|
blinding factor and private key. We now choose to generate the new
|
|
coin's blinding factor and private key using a random oracle $R$
|
|
keyed by $k$. We can do this because first the data is encrypted and
|
|
second revealing the new coin's blinding factor or public or private
|
|
keys later reveals nothing about $k$, thanks to \cite[Theorem 4.1]{Rudich88}.
|
|
|
|
After this modification, our real KDF scheme with the KDF instantiated
|
|
by the random oracle $R$ gives the same result as our scheme that
|
|
encrypts data produced by $R$. We now observe the encryption has
|
|
becomes superfluous and may be omitted, as another party who learns
|
|
$t$ also learns $k$.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
We may now conclude that Taler remains unlinkable even with the
|
|
refresh protocol, assuming the security of elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman
|
|
key exchange on curve25519 and that our SHA512 HMAC construction remains
|
|
strong enough. We have lost our clean assumption on merely the hardness
|
|
of recognizing our SHA512 output, due to using the random oracle model,
|
|
but recognizing has output remains the most realistic attack.
|
|
We use an HMAC in our implementation to make this part more robust.
|
|
|
|
We do not distinguish between information known by the exchange and
|
|
information known by the merchant in the above. As a result, this
|
|
proves that our linking protocol \S\ref{subsec:linking} does not
|
|
degrade privacy. We note that the exchange could lie in the linking
|
|
protocol about the transfer public key to generate coins that it can
|
|
link, at a financial loss to the exchange that it would have to share
|
|
with its auditor. However, in the normal course of payments the link
|
|
protocol is never used.
|
|
|
|
\subsection{Exculpability arguments}
|
|
|
|
\begin{lemma}\label{lemma:double-spending}
|
|
The exchange can detect, prevent, and prove double-spending.
|
|
\end{lemma}
|
|
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
A coin can only be spent by running the deposit protocol or the refresh
|
|
protocol with the exchange. Thus every time a coin is spent, the exchange
|
|
obtains either a deposit-permission or a refresh-record, both of which
|
|
contain a signature made with the public key of coin to authorizing the
|
|
respective operation. If the exchange has a set of refresh-records and
|
|
deposit-permissions whose total value exceed the value of the coin, the
|
|
exchange can show this set to prove that double-spending is being
|
|
attempted and justify rejecting the operation.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
\begin{corollary}
|
|
Merchants and customers can verify proofs of double-spending attempts
|
|
by verifying that the signatures in the set of refresh-records and
|
|
deposit-permissions are correct and that the total value would exceed
|
|
the coin's value.
|
|
\end{corollary}
|
|
|
|
\begin{lemma}
|
|
% only holds given sufficient time
|
|
Customers can either obtain proof-of-payment or their money back, even
|
|
when the merchant is faulty.
|
|
\end{lemma}
|
|
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
When the customer sends the deposit-permission for a coin to a correct
|
|
merchant, the merchant will pass it on to the exchange, and pass the
|
|
exchange's response, a deposit-confirmation, on to the customer. If
|
|
the customer does not receive a deposit-confirmation from the
|
|
merchant, it will run the refresh protocol. If the faulty merchant
|
|
did deposit the coin, the customer will receive the
|
|
deposit-confirmation as part of the double-spending proof from the
|
|
refreshing protocol. If the merchant did not deposit the coin, the
|
|
customer receives a new, unlinkable coin.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
\begin{corollary}
|
|
If a customer paid for a contract signed by a merchant,
|
|
they can prove it by showing the deposit permissions for all coins.
|
|
\end{corollary}
|
|
|
|
\begin{lemma}
|
|
Only the merchant can issue refunds, and only to the original customer.
|
|
\end{lemma}
|
|
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
The refund protocol requires a signature matching the merchant's public
|
|
key, which had to be included in the original contract.
|
|
Since the refund only increases the balance of a coin that the original
|
|
customer owns, only the original customer can use the increased balance.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
|
|
\begin{theorem}
|
|
The protocol prevents double-spending and provides exculpability.
|
|
\end{theorem}
|
|
\begin{proof}
|
|
Follows from Lemma~\ref{lemma:double-spending} and the assumption
|
|
that the exchange cannot forge signatures to obtain an fake
|
|
set of deposit-permissions or refresh-records.
|
|
\end{proof}
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
\section{Implementation}
|
|
|
|
We implemented the Taler protocol in the context of a payment system
|
|
for the Web, as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:taler-arch}. The system was
|
|
designed for real-world usage with current Web technology and within
|
|
the existing financial system.
|
|
|
|
By instructing their bank to send money to an exchange, the customer
|
|
creates a (non-anonymous) balance, called a \emph{reserve}, at the
|
|
exchange. The customer can subsequently withdraw coins from this
|
|
reserve into their \emph{wallet}, which stores and manages coins.
|
|
|
|
To withdrawal of coins from the exchange, the customer's wallet authenticates
|
|
itself using an Ed25519 private key for the customer's reserve.
|
|
The customer must include the corresponding reserve public key in the
|
|
payment instruction from the customer's bank to the exchange's bank
|
|
that funded their reserve. With a bank that directly supports Taler
|
|
on their online banking website, this process is streamlined for the
|
|
user, since the wallet automatically creates the key pair for the
|
|
reserve and adds the public key to the payment instruction.
|
|
|
|
While browsing a merchant's website, the website can signal the wallet
|
|
to request a payment from a user. The user is then asked to confirm
|
|
or reject this proposal. The merchant deposits coins received from
|
|
the customer's wallet at the exchange. Since bank transfers are
|
|
usually costly, the exchange delays and aggregates multiple deposits
|
|
into a bigger wire transfer. This allows Taler to be used even for
|
|
microtransactions of amounts smaller than usually handled by the
|
|
underlying banking system.
|
|
|
|
As shown in Figure~\ref{fig:taler-arch}, the merchant is internally split
|
|
into multiple components. The implementation of the Taler prococol and
|
|
cryptographic operations is isolated into a separate component, called
|
|
the \emph{merchant backend}, which the merchant accesses through an API
|
|
or software development kit (SDK) of their choice.
|
|
|
|
Our implementations of the exchange (70,000 LOC) and merchant backend
|
|
(20,000 LOC) are written in C using PostgreSQL as the database and
|
|
libgcrypt for cryptographic operations. The \emph{wallet} (10,000
|
|
LOC) is implemented in TypeScript as a cross-browser extension using
|
|
the WebExtensions API, which is available for a majority of widely
|
|
used browsers. It also uses libgcrypt (compiled to JavaScript) for
|
|
cryptographic operations as the required primitives are not yet
|
|
natively supported by Web browsers. Sample merchant websites (1,000
|
|
LOC) and an example bank (2,000 LOC) with tight Taler integration are
|
|
provided in Python.
|
|
|
|
The code is available at \url{https://git.taler.net/} and a demo
|
|
is publicly available at \url{https://demo.taler.net/}.
|
|
|
|
|
|
\begin{figure}
|
|
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{taler-arch-full.pdf}
|
|
\caption{The different components of the Taler system in the
|
|
context of a banking system providing money creation,
|
|
wire transfers and authentication. (Auditor omitted.)}
|
|
\label{fig:taler-arch}
|
|
\end{figure}
|
|
|
|
|
|
\section{Experimental results}
|
|
|
|
%\begin{figure}[b!]
|
|
% \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{bw_in.png}
|
|
% \caption{Incoming traffic at the exchange, in bytes per 5 minutes.}
|
|
% \label{fig:in}
|
|
%\end{figure}\hfill
|
|
% \begin{figure}[b!]
|
|
% \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{bw_out.png}
|
|
% \caption{Outgoing traffic from the exchange, in bytes per 5 minutes.}
|
|
% \label{fig:out}
|
|
% \end{figure}
|
|
% \begin{figure}[b!]
|
|
% \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{db_read.png}
|
|
% \caption{DB read operations per second.}
|
|
% \label{fig:read}
|
|
% \end{figure}
|
|
% \begin{figure}[b!]
|
|
% \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{db_write.png}
|
|
% \caption{DB write operations per second.}
|
|
% \label{fig:write}
|
|
% \end{figure}
|
|
% \begin{figure}[b!]
|
|
% \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{figure}
|
|
% \begin{figure}[b!]
|
|
% \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{figure}
|
|
% \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. We used
|
|
1024-bit RSA keys for blind signatures, Curve25519 for DH, EdDSA
|
|
for non-blind signatures and SHA-512 for hashing. For the KDF and
|
|
FDH operations we used~\cite{rfc5869} with SHA-512 as XTR and SHA-256
|
|
for PRF as suggested in~\cite{rfc5869}. 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, given that 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.
|
|
|
|
Scalability of the design is also not a concern, as the exchange's
|
|
database can be easily shareded over the different public keys as
|
|
desired. Similar to the RSCoin~\cite{danezis2016rscoin} design, this
|
|
ensures that conflicting transactions end up in the same shard,
|
|
enabling linear scalability of the database operations. Similarly,
|
|
the cryptographic verification in the frontend can be distributed over
|
|
as many compute nodes as required.
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately it was not possible to experimentally compare the performance of
|
|
Taler directly to other e-cash systems, since to our best knowledge there
|
|
is no working and publicly available implementation of any of them.
|
|
|
|
When compared with the current average confirmation time for Bitcoin
|
|
payments, Taler is many orders of magnitude faster. In a LAN, Taler
|
|
transactions taking about ten milliseconds are doable, given the speed
|
|
of modern SSD drives and RSA/EdDSA signature verification
|
|
algorithms.\footnote{We refer to \url{https://bench.cr.yp.to/} for
|
|
detailed benchmarks of cryptographic primitives.} In practice, a
|
|
few network round trips for the TCP/HTTPS handshakes and the HTTP
|
|
request dominate overall latency. While the confirmation time of
|
|
Taler is thus typically in the order of a few hundered milliseconds,
|
|
the time to mine even one block in Bitcoin is around ten
|
|
minutes \footnote{Data retrieved in May 2017 from
|
|
\url{https://blockchain.info/stats}}. Bitcoin merchants following
|
|
the Bitcoin specification must wait for six such blocks until they
|
|
consider a transaction confirmed. Thus latency for durable
|
|
transactions in Bitcoin is about three to four orders of magnitude
|
|
lower.
|
|
|
|
\section{Discussion}
|
|
|
|
\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} \label{sec:offline}
|
|
|
|
Anonymous digital cash schemes since Chaum were frequently designed
|
|
to allow the merchant to be offline during the transaction,
|
|
by providing a means to deanonymize customers involved in
|
|
double-spending. We consider this problematic as either the
|
|
exchange or the merchant still requires an out-of-band
|
|
means to recover funds from the customer, an expensive and
|
|
unreliable proposition. Worse, there are unacceptable risks that
|
|
a customer may accidentally deanonymize herself, 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, they 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{Business concerns} \label{sec:payback}
|
|
|
|
The Taler system implementation includes additional protocol elements
|
|
to address real-world concerns. To begin with, the exchange
|
|
automatically transfers any funds that have been left for an extended
|
|
amount of time in a customer's reserve back to the customer's bank
|
|
account. Furthermore, we allow the exchange to revoke denomination
|
|
keys, and wallets periodically check for such revocations. If a
|
|
denomination key has been revoked, the wallets use the {\em payback}
|
|
protocol to deposit funds back to the customer's reserve, from where
|
|
they are either withdrawn with a new denomination key or sent back to
|
|
the customer's bank account. Unlike ordinary deposits, the payback
|
|
protocol does not incur any transaction fees. The primary use of the
|
|
protocol is to limit the financial loss in cases where an audit
|
|
reveals that the exchange's private keys were compromised, and to
|
|
automatically pay back balances held in a customers' wallet if an
|
|
exchange ever goes out of business.
|
|
|
|
|
|
%\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 $10^{-2}$ 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 free software
|
|
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}
|
|
|
|
We thank people (anonymized).
|
|
%This work benefits from the financial support of the Brittany Region
|
|
%(ARED 9178) and a grant from the Renewable Freedom Foundation.
|
|
%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.
|
|
|
|
%\newpage
|
|
|
|
\bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}
|
|
\bibliography{taler,rfc,rom}
|
|
|
|
%\end{document}
|
|
|
|
%\vfill
|
|
%\begin{center}
|
|
% \Large Demonstration available at \url{https://demo.taler.net/}
|
|
%\end{center}
|
|
%\vfill
|
|
|
|
\newpage
|
|
\appendix
|
|
|
|
\section{Notation summary} \label{sec:notation}
|
|
|
|
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 persisted 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[$\FDH_K$]{Full domain hash over the modulus of $K_p$}
|
|
\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[$X_j$]{Public key of a exchange (not used to sign coins)}
|
|
\item[$\vec{X}$]{Vector of $X_j$ 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[${\mathcal A}$]{Complete contract signed by the merchant}
|
|
\item[${\mathcal D}$]{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 $t^{(i)}_s$}
|
|
\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[$L^{(i)}$]{Link secret derived from ECDH operation via hashing}
|
|
% \item[$E_{L^{(i)}}()$]{Symmetric encryption using key $L^{(i)}$}
|
|
% \item[$E^{(i)}$]{$i$-th encryption of the private information $(c_s^{(i)}, b_i)$}
|
|
% \item[$\vec{E}$]{Vector of $E^{(i)}$}
|
|
\item[$\mathcal{R}$]{Tuple of revealed vectors in cut-and-choose protocol,
|
|
where the vectors exclude the selected index $\gamma$}
|
|
\item[$\overline{L^{(i)}}$]{Link secrets 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}
|
|
|
|
\newpage
|
|
\onecolumn
|
|
\section{Supplemental: Reviews and Responses from Financial Cryptography}
|
|
|
|
\subsection{FC 2016}
|
|
\verbatiminput{taler_FC2016.txt}
|
|
|
|
\subsection{FC 2017}
|
|
\verbatiminput{taler_FC2017.txt}
|
|
|
|
\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:}
|
|
$\langle S_M(m, f), \vec{X} \rangle$ containing the price of the offer $f$,
|
|
a transaction ID $m$ and the list of exchanges
|
|
$\vec{X} = \langle X_1, \ldots, X_n \rangle$ accepted by the merchant,
|
|
where each $X_j$ is an 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 $X_j$ 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
|
|
$\langle \mathcal{L}, X_j\rangle$ to the merchant,
|
|
where $X_j$ 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 persists $\langle \mathcal{L} \rangle$
|
|
and notifies the merchant that locking was successful.
|
|
\item\label{contract2} The merchant creates a digitally signed contract
|
|
\begin{equation*}
|
|
\mathcal{A} := S_M(m, f, a, H(p, r))
|
|
\end{equation*}
|
|
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 persists $\langle \mathcal{A} \rangle$ and sends it to the customer.
|
|
\item The customer creates a
|
|
\emph{deposit-permission} $\mathcal{D} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, \widetilde{L}, f, m, M_p, H(a), H(p, r))$, persists
|
|
$\langle \mathcal{A}, \mathcal{D} \rangle$ and sends $\mathcal{D}$ to the merchant.
|
|
\item\label{invoice_paid2} The merchant persists the received $\langle \mathcal{D} \rangle$.
|
|
\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, the
|
|
exchange performs the following transaction:
|
|
\begin{enumerate}
|
|
\item $\langle \mathcal{D}, p, r \rangle$ is persisted.
|
|
\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.}~$f <f' \leq f_{max}$. Similarly $a'$ is the new
|
|
contract data appended to older contract data $a$.
|
|
The merchant persists $\langle \mathcal{A}' \rangle$ and sends it to the customer.
|
|
\item Customer persists $\langle \mathcal{A}' \rangle$, creates
|
|
$\mathcal{D}' := S_c(\widetilde{C}, \mathcal{L}, f', m, M_p, H(a'), H(p, r))$, persists
|
|
$\langle \mathcal{D'} \rangle$ and sends it to the merchant.
|
|
\item The merchant persists the received $\langle \mathcal{D'} \rangle$ and
|
|
deletes the older $\mathcal{D}$.
|
|
\end{enumerate}
|
|
|
|
%Figure~\ref{fig:spending_protocol_interactions} summarizes the interactions of the
|
|
%coin spending protocol.
|
|
|
|
For transactions with multiple coins, the steps of the protocol are
|
|
executed in parallel for each coin. During the time a coin is locked,
|
|
the locked fraction may not be spent at a different merchant or via a
|
|
deposit permission that does not contain $\mathcal{L}$. The exchange will
|
|
release the locks when they expire or are used in a deposit operation.
|
|
Thus the coins can be used with other merchants once their locks
|
|
expire, even if the original merchant never executed any deposit for
|
|
the coin. However, doing so may link the new transaction to older
|
|
transaction.
|
|
|
|
Similarly, if a transaction is aborted after Step 2, subsequent
|
|
transactions with the same coin can be linked to the coin, but not
|
|
directly to the coin's owner. The same applies to partially spent
|
|
coins. Thus, 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{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
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for microdonations as the transaction costs from involving the exchange
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|
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}
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|
\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
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 "Speculation 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}
|