Re: [Bitcoin-development] Protocol extensions

[Eric Lombrozo <elombrozo@gmail.com>]

There are other issues besides IP address anonymization that would
need to be addressed. I'm sure at least a good number of you have read
http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524 and have seen Dan Kaminsky's
slideshows.

i.e. all fund aggregations (transactions with multiple inputs using
different public keys) make it easy to associate all the public keys
to a single entity. Large movements of bitcoin to addresses that
haven't been seen before are often interesting events. Then you can
correlate transactions with trades on exchanges or with other data
sources for time and amount.

However, going back to what had been said earlier, the bitcoin
protocol itself is not really designed to address these issues. It is
designed with the goal of rapidly propagating transactions over a
network and getting a bunch of peers to be able to independently
verify that they occurred in a particular order and that the
signatures are valid.

The subject of how to anonymize cryptocurrencies is a separate one,
IMHO...and one which needs to address not only how to hide the
identity of those who relay transactions but also how to organize and
manipulate wallets as to thwart attempts at block chain analysis. And
these topics, although interesting in and of themselves, was not what
this thread was intended to address. This thread was intended to
address the issue of extending the protocol to allow for independently
running thin or specialized services that can all interface via the
bitcoin protocol without requiring one to step outside the protocol
with special gateway access.