Got it, thanks everyone!

Hi,

Follow up the previous post. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1145501.msg12185113#msg12185113

I did somehow develop a new heuristic to cluster Bitcoin address together using many kind of methods.

Now I want to evaluate the result. I found on blockchin.info that they have the tag for addresses.

However, I don't see how can I request the tag through their API.

Did anyone done something similar before?

(I also found this website, https://jsapi.apiary.io/apis/blockstem/reference/authentication.html

It provides the API to let you request for the address tag. Still trying to confirm what is the source of their tag with them.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is another idea to evaluate the result.

I was thinking maybe I can recreate the Bitcoin network with some models, and cluster the addresses in the artificial network.

With the artificial network, I might be able to know which addresses are in the same cluster in advance.

And compare it with the result after I cluster the addresses.

Just not sure if it is feasible.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Any idea or help are very much appreciated!!!

Thanks for the information. I checked the website. Most of the op_return messages are gibberish. Perhaps there are more data mining techniques that can be applied to decode the message and figure out the purpose of the transactions. So far I don't intend to go that deep in the direction yet. Would be nice to know if other people have done related study about it.

As for the transaction patterns.

Relay: the transaction that only has one input, one output. Usually used to move Bitcoin from one party to another without leaving any change behind. According to my study about the block chain, this kind of transaction are mostly used to mix with other patterns to hide its money flow.

Sweep: This kind of transaction happen when a transaction controller wants to combine multiple separate unspent transaction outputs into a single transaction output that is easier to process and control. Hence, it is very likely that the ownership of the inputs and output are the same.

Peeling Chain: A peeling transaction consists mostly of peel transactions where the change transaction is used as the input to a subsequent peel transaction. A peel transaction has any number of inputs are combined in a transaction and two outputs are created. However, most of the peeling chains that have been studied start with one input and huge amount. It is possible that the pooled mining use peeling chain to pay miners. Hence, we need to cluster peeling chain carefully to reduce the false positive rate.

Those information are quoted from the document in the previous comment.

I think the first two kinds of transaction are easier to detect. Still trying to figure out how to detect a peeling chain precisely.

According to the previous discussions about Heuristic2.

I think there are many cases that the payments are going to new addresses not only the change. That’s why the developers set up many restrictions about Heuristic 2 to lower the false positive rate. For detail please refer to the two studies below:

Bitcoin and Beyond: Exclusively Informational Money
 (Section 5.1 entity graph)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.4758.pdf

A Fistful of Bitcoins: Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names
(Section 4.3 Heuristic 2)
http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/s.meiklejohn/files/imc13.pdf

Perhaps there are more conditions that can be added to the heuristic to identify the change addresses accurately.  Such as the transaction amount like the previous discussion.

Condition:
1. Only two output in the transaction.
2. One of the output is a new address, the other one is an old address.
3*. The new address has the ugly amount of Bitcoin (e.g. 0.1876573 BTC), while the old address of the transaction has the amount that round to the two(?) digits after decimal point(e.g.  0.10 BTC).


In this way, we will be able to avoid the exception below. Even the converted amount has many digits in BTC. It is very unlikely the change amount will be a nice number and send to an old address.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

According to the discussions about the new heuristic based on transaction patterns

This is very helpful!! Thanks!!

After reading this document. I think the transaction patterns we can leverage are:

Relay transations(one input, one output)
Peeling chain(consecutive transactions with one input, two outputs)
Sweep transactions(multiple inputs, one output)


This is the exception that related to the Sweep transaction pattern. Perhaps we can set a bar for the number of input. It needs to be higher than the bar to be consider as a valid sweep transaction. Otherwise we consider it as an exception. 


Those are the thoughts I have so far. Welcome to comment or propose some new ideas.

Really appreciate for all the ideas and resources.

I read some researches about it. Seems like they just accept the fact that there are some exceptions.

In most of the cases the Heuristic1 is correct. Unless we can identify which transactions are made by coinjoin.


I found the refined version of Heuristic 2.

The simplest way is to identify the transactions that only have two output addresses.

And only one of the output appears first time in the blockchain (new address).

The new address will be identify as the change address.


Yeah, that's why I want to do this! Many users are using disposal addresses to hide their track to enhance the privacy.

Maybe I didn't write it clear enough.

For example, the transaction pattern that only has one input, one output.

Most likely the input and output addresses are belong to the same user.

This kind of transaction pattern is mostly used to transit Bitcoin.

Moreover, we can also consider the whole peeling chain is belong to the same user who try to hide his/her track.

Or the distributing and converging transaction patterns.

Still trying to figure out how to identify those more complected transaction patterns.



Try this! https://bitiodine.net/

The author implemented heuristic 1 & 2 and built this website.



I couldn't find any previous discussion regarding to this topic.

Any information or idea are welcome : ))))

Hi, all

As we all know that Bitcoin users can have more than one Bitcoin addresses.

I am looking for every possible ways to group addresses based on their ownership.

After doing some research about this topic. There are currently two popular heuristics.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heuristic1: Grouping all the input addresses of transactions to the same cluster.

Heuristic2: Grouping the change addresses (shadow addresses) to the same cluster of the input addresses.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I want to do is to develop another heuristic. So far I am thinking to group addresses based on its transaction patterns.

Such as peeling chain, or the addresses that distributed bitcoin to many other addresses and converge in the end.

Is there any other transaction patterns that we can identify its ownership?

It is just the initial idea. Any idea, advice or relative works would be appreciated