

While effective, diffusion has recently been proven in several studies not to provide adequate anonymity protection. This is referred to as Bitcoin’s gossip protocol and is how transactions can reach the majority of nodes in the network very quickly.īitcoin now implements a form of broadcast known as diffusion where each node spreads transactions with exponential and independent delays to its neighbors to mitigate against the deanonymization of a user’s IP address. The transaction message is then subsequently propagated in a chain reaction where each node further spreads the message to nodes that they are connected to.


In Bitcoin, when a user broadcasts a transaction from a node, it is propagated to the nodes connected to that specific node known as its peers. To better understand how Dandelion++ works, it is essential to focus on how transactions are broadcast in Bitcoin and how the original Dandelion protocol worked. It explicitly improves upon idealistic assumptions of the original Dandelion proposal and differs from most broadcast communication anonymity protocols in its approach of usage goals and analysis metrics. What is Dandelion++?ĭandelion++ is a lightweight and straightforward network layer solution with formally guaranteed anonymity that can easily be implemented with existing cryptocurrencies. Dandelion++ seems poised to be included in an upcoming Bitcoin Core release. Dandelion++ addresses the concerns with the original protocol and has already been implemented by the research team with a positive response from Bitcoin’s development teams. Its original proposal was subsequently discovered to contain various faults that could lead to its deanonymization over time due to some idealistic assumptions of potential adversaries.Įventually, an improved version of the Dandelion Protocol was proposed in May earlier this year called Dandelion++. The Dandelion protocol is a network layer anonymity solution that was originally proposed in 2017 to help improve on Bitcoin’s P2P network privacy. Both Monero and Zcoin integrate network layer privacy features such as Tor and I2P, but these features also come with prolonged development and other downsides. However, P2P/overlay network communication also plays a vital role in anonymizing interactions across a blockchain network. Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Zcoin incorporate blockchain-level anonymity features such as Ring CTs and zero-knowledge proofs to make sure that transactions cannot be traced. Public blockchains are permanent records of digital transactions, so blockchain privacy implementations focus on obscuring transaction data and anonymizing the identity of senders and receivers. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies employ privacy at both the blockchain level and network layer.
