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Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

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Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#101

Post by derangedHorse »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #39
derangedHorse wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When using one’s own lightning node it doesn’t matter if individual nodes on the path to your destination node keep logs, they can’t collect much information besides who the last and next node are in the route. The original and final destination (as well as any other useful payment information) are obscured through onion routing and the information you can learn from traffic analysis is limited and difficult to perfo…

If you use your own lightning node, the other nodes on the path to your destination can still tell which node the information came from, and that can be used to de-anonymize your transaction. If you are the only user of your lightning node, it is trivial for the next person in the chain to attribute transactions to you.

No they can't, that's the whole point of onion routing. The next hop doesn't know if the packet started with you or if you're just another node in the payment path.

Reference: https://github.com/lightning/bolts/blob/master/04-onion-rout...

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#102

Post by Apocryphon »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #19
pclmulqdq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning is a lot less untraceable than people think. Settlement payments on a lightning channel are still traceable, and can be matched up. Also, lightning nodes get a lot of information about transactions that they don't publish to the blockchain, and you can bet that most lightning nodes that are around today keep logs. Most of them are run by big crypto companies, several of which are US-based.

It's not meant to be "untraceable". But it's fast, and as mentioned not a public ledger. If you want untraceable, you can go out of your way to achieve that using something akin to tornado.cash I think the point is that the technology is already here and available - it's just not evenly distributed yet.

Really bizarre that the whole asset class is labelled "crypto" when it's not even traceable. The blockchain being an unalterable ledger makes this generation of cryptocurrencies weirdly public. Perhaps in the future there will be true crypto currency.

Re: Chainalysis: A startup that helps governments trace crypto

#104

Post by willmorrison »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #70
olalonde wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I missing anything? Bitcoin transactions that use CoinJoin (e.g. Wasabi Wallet). https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/CoinJoin

It's been a couple of years, but I thought Chainalysis said they could break CoinJoin.

They also say they can trace Monero, so I don’t fully trust their statements.
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