On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Alan Reiner <etothe...@gmail.com> wrote: > Perhaps it could be improved by cleaning up dust from any address by default > (not just ones already included in the tx), with the option for the user to > disable that behavior. After all, anonymity was never a core feature of the > network -- I think it makes sense that the logic would reduce anonymity by > default in exchange for a cleaner network, with a clear option to "opt-out" > of that logic if user cares. I think most users don't actually care...
Yea, the obvious case would look for exact matches— but because sane software pays change to fresh addresses I expect this to trigger an unfortunately infrequent amount of time. Why do you bother with the 5 input limit? The way I'd handle this in the reference client is as a pure post-processing step. E.g. take any w/ change transaction formed and try adding small inputs in a greedy fashion until the next would change the fees. Do you see a reason not to do this? A next step up in infrequency is to use input taint tracking information to gather up coins from all inputs which are already crosslinked. In the reference client, which doesn't avoid crosslinking, this would likely be quite effective but I worry about having an O(N^2)-ish algorithm as part of coin selection. And so I think it would require maintaining in the wallet the cross link history for each address rather than building it on the fly. This seems like a lot of changes for a relatively modest optimization. Another possibility would be to not apply the privacy rule to very small inputs or to addresses which have only ever received a very small sum total. But I don't know how to define very small in a robust way, and I think that the privacy behavior of the software being "inconsistent" from the users perspective would be somewhat unfortunate. Perhaps a setting for the value considered very small for this purpose which defaults to the relay MINFEE? (And also include larger outputs when they're address matches). The the problem with this is this: Say I have an address 1GMaxwellFOO that everyone knows belongs to me. Someone who wants to identify all my transactions sends me a constant spray of 1e-8 inputs to 1GMaxwellFOO. If the address association is ignored (even for only very small inputs) then all my transactions become rapidly identifiable. Privacy, of at least a basic form, is an important element of the system, if it's not preserved than bitcoin is inferior to traditional value transfer systems in an additional way. (And FWIW, I've seen self-appointed sluths on IRC trying to catch trouble makers by paying tiny amounts to their extortion addresses; with the incorrect expectation that it would taint their other transactions. So even when it doesn't usually work people have tried using this to attack people) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep yourself connected to Go Parallel: BUILD Helping you discover the best ways to construct your parallel projects. http://goparallel.sourceforge.net _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
