A Hitchhiker's Guide to Privacy-Preserving Cryptocurrencies: A Survey on Anonymity, Confidentiality, and Auditability

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21008v1
• Date: Tue, 27 May 2025 10:42:28 GMT
• Title: A Hitchhiker's Guide to Privacy-Preserving Cryptocurrencies: A Survey on Anonymity, Confidentiality, and Auditability
• Authors: Matteo Nardelli, Francesco De Sclavis, Michela Iezzi,
• Abstract summary: This survey provides a comprehensive and technically grounded overview of privacy-preserving digital currencies.<n>We propose a taxonomy of privacy goals, including anonymity, confidentiality, unlinkability, and auditability.<n>We trace the evolution of privacy-preserving currencies through three generations, highlighting shifts from basic anonymity guarantees toward more nuanced privacy-accountability trade-offs.
• Score: 0.24578723416255746
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are reshaping the monetary landscape, offering transparency and efficiency while raising critical concerns about user privacy and regulatory compliance. This survey provides a comprehensive and technically grounded overview of privacy-preserving digital currencies, covering both cryptocurrencies and CBDCs. We propose a taxonomy of privacy goals -- including anonymity, confidentiality, unlinkability, and auditability -- and map them to underlying cryptographic primitives, protocol mechanisms, and system architectures. Unlike previous surveys, our work adopts a design-oriented perspective, linking high-level privacy objectives to concrete implementations. We also trace the evolution of privacy-preserving currencies through three generations, highlighting shifts from basic anonymity guarantees toward more nuanced privacy-accountability trade-offs. Finally, we identify open challenges at the intersection of cryptography, distributed systems, and policy definition, which motivate further investigation into the primitives and design of digital currencies that balance real-world privacy and auditability needs.

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