Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 14 from 9 users
Re: Why not use Chainanalysis to see your privacy score
by
RHavar
on 12/12/2020, 16:40:24 UTC
⭐ Merited by ETFbitcoin (3) ,o_e_l_e_o (2) ,gmaxwell (2) ,Coding Enthusiast (2) ,Heisenberg_Hunter (1) ,Husna QA (1) ,Rizzrack (1) ,vapourminer (1) ,witcher_sense (1)
It's not as easy as you think.

As an example look at this transaction:

https://blockstream.info/tx/a697ea66639ba7966269e935d4374e28bc368ca683c7214dfc28e42eae026dde


blockstream has a pretty basic privacy analysis:
* Round payment amount
* Mixed script types
* Unnecessary input heuristic

which suggests the privacy of this transaction is quite poor. However, it could actually be excellent! I have frequently hand-created transactions that look like they are doing something obvious (e.g. this transaction looks like it's a payment to the 0.3 BTC output) but in fact, that 0.3 BTC output might be the change output! (thanks to careful coin selection/mining fee)  and maybe the 0.021026 BTC output is actually the payment. The absolute best transactions from a privacy point of view look like one thing, but are doing the other.


So to create a real "privacy score" you basically need to know "what it looks like" vs "what it actually is" on a wallet level (?)