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Platypus: A Central Bank Digital Currency with Unlinkable Transactions and Privacy-Preserving Regulation

Published: 07 November 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Due to the popularity of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, the increasing digitalization of payments, and the constantly reducing role of cash in society, central banks have shown an increased interest in deploying central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that could serve as a digital cash-equivalent. While most recent research on CBDCs focuses on blockchain technology, it is not clear that this choice of technology provides the optimal solution. In particular, the centralized trust model of a CBDC offers opportunities for different designs. In this paper, we depart from blockchain designs and instead build on ideas from traditional e-cash schemes. We propose a new style of building digital currencies that combines the transaction processing model of e-cash with an account-based fund management model. We argue that such a style of building digital currencies is especially well-suited to CBDCs. We also design the first such digital currency system, called Platypus, that provides strong privacy, high scalability, and expressive but simple regulation, which are all critical features for a CBDC. Platypus achieves these properties by adapting techniques similar to those used in anonymous blockchain cryptocurrencies like Zcash to fit our account model and applying them to the e-cash context.

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  • (2025)PTTS: Zero-knowledge proof-based private token transfer system on Ethereum blockchain and its network flow based balance range privacy attack analysisJournal of Network and Computer Applications10.1016/j.jnca.2024.104045233(104045)Online publication date: Jan-2025
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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CCS '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security
      November 2022
      3598 pages
      ISBN:9781450394505
      DOI:10.1145/3548606
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Published: 07 November 2022

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      Author Tags

      1. anonymity
      2. cbdc
      3. compliance
      4. digital currency
      5. e-cash
      6. privacy
      7. regulation
      8. zero-knowledge proof

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      Cited By

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      • (2025)PTTS: Zero-knowledge proof-based private token transfer system on Ethereum blockchain and its network flow based balance range privacy attack analysisJournal of Network and Computer Applications10.1016/j.jnca.2024.104045233(104045)Online publication date: Jan-2025
      • (2024)BPA: A decentralized payment system that balances privacy and auditabilityAIMS Mathematics10.3934/math.20243029:3(6183-6206)Online publication date: 2024
      • (2024)Division of Regulatory Power: Collaborative Regulation for Privacy-Preserving BlockchainsIEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security10.1109/TIFS.2023.334826819(2533-2548)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
      • (2024)LIMBOCOIN: On the Denial-of-Service of Token based Retail CBDCs2024 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC)10.1109/ICBC59979.2024.10634471(325-333)Online publication date: 27-May-2024
      • (2024)Privacy implications of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs): a systematic review of literatureEDPACS10.1080/07366981.2024.2376794(1-37)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2024
      • (2024)A supervised privacy preservation transaction system for aviation businessPeer-to-Peer Networking and Applications10.1007/s12083-024-01647-517:4(1898-1913)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2024
      • (2024)PARScoin: A Privacy-preserving, Auditable, and Regulation-friendly StablecoinCryptology and Network Security10.1007/978-981-97-8013-6_13(289-313)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2024
      • (2024)Scalable and Lightweight State-Channel AuditsCryptology and Network Security10.1007/978-981-97-8013-6_12(264-288)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2024
      • (2024)Systematic review: Comparing zk‐SNARK, zk‐STARK, and bulletproof protocols for privacy‐preserving authenticationSECURITY AND PRIVACY10.1002/spy2.401Online publication date: 18-Apr-2024
      • (2023)Youth Intention Towards Implementing Digital CurrencyGlobal Perspectives on Social Media Usage Within Governments10.4018/978-1-6684-7450-1.ch018(276-296)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2023
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