\documentclass{llncs} %\usepackage[margin=1in,a4paper]{geometry} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \usepackage{palatino} \usepackage{xspace} \usepackage{microtype} \usepackage{tikz,eurosym} \usepackage{amsmath,amssymb} \usepackage{enumitem} \usetikzlibrary{shapes,arrows} \usetikzlibrary{positioning} \usetikzlibrary{calc} % Relate to: % http://fc14.ifca.ai/papers/fc14_submission_124.pdf % Terminology: % - SEPA-transfer -- avoid 'SEPA transaction' as we use % 'transaction' already when we talk about taxable % transfers of Taler coins and database 'transactions'. % - wallet = coins at customer % - reserve = currency entrusted to mint waiting for withdrawal % - deposit = SEPA to mint % - withdrawal = mint to customer % - spending = customer to merchant % - redeeming = merchant to mint (and then mint SEPA to merchant) % - refreshing = customer-mint-customer % - dirty coin = coin with exposed public key % - fresh coin = coin that was refreshed or is new % - coin signing key = mint's online key used to (blindly) sign coin % - message signing key = mint's online key to sign mint messages % - mint master key = mint's key used to sign other mint keys % - owner = entity that knows coin private key % - transaction = coin ownership transfer that should be taxed % - sharing = coin copying that should not be taxed \title{Taler: Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Reserves} \begin{document} \mainmatter %\author{Florian Dold \and Sree Harsha Totakura \and Benedikt M\"uller \and Christian Grothoff} %\institute{The GNUnet Project} \maketitle \begin{abstract} This paper introduces Taler, a Chaum-style digital currency using blind signatures that enables anonymous payments while ensuring that entities that receive payments are auditable and thus taxable. Taler differs from Chaum's original proposal in that customers can never defraud anyone, merchants can only fail to deliver the merchandise to the customer, and mints can be fully audited. Consequently, enforcement of honest behavior is better and more timely than with Chaum, and is at least as strict as with legacy credit card payment systems that do not provide for privacy. Furthermore, Taler allows fractional payments, and even in this case is still able to guarantee unlinkability of transactions via a new coin refreshing protocol. We argue that Taler provides a secure digital currency for modern liberal societies as it is a flexible, libre and efficient protocol and adequately balances the state's need for monetary control with the citizen's needs for private economic activity. \end{abstract} \section{Introduction} The design of payment systems shapes economies and societies. Strong, developed nation states are evolving towards fully transparent payment systems, such as the MasterCard and VisaCard credit card schemes and computerized bank transactions such as SWIFT. Such systems enable mass surveillance and thus extensive government control over the economy, from taxation to intrusion into private lives. Bribery and corruption are limited to elites that can afford to escape the dragnet. The other extreme are economies of developing, weak nation states where economic activity is based largely on coins, paper money or even barter. Here, the state is often unable to effectively monitor or tax economic activity, and this limits the ability of the state to shape the society. As bribery is virtually impossible to detect, corruption is widespread and not limited to social elites. ZeroCoin~\cite{miers2013zerocoin} is an example for translating such an economy into the digital realm. This paper describes Taler, a simple and practical payment system for a modern social-liberal society, which is not be served well by current payment systems which enable either an authoritarian state in total control of the population, or create weak states with almost anarchistic economies. The Taler protocol is havily based on ideas from Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind} and also follows Chaum's basic architecture of customer, merchant and mint (Figure~\ref{fig:cmm}). The two designs share the key first step where the {\em customer} withdraws digital {\em coins} from the {\em mint} with unlinkability provided via blind signatures. The coins can then be spend at a {\em merchant} who {\em deposits} them at the mint. Taler uses online detection of double-spending, thus assuring the merchant instantly that a transaction is valid. \begin{figure}[h] \centering \begin{tikzpicture} \tikzstyle{def} = [node distance= 5em and 7em, inner sep=1em, outer sep=.3em]; \node (origin) at (0,0) {}; \node (mint) [def,above=of origin,draw]{Mint}; \node (customer) [def, draw, below left=of origin] {Customer}; \node (merchant) [def, draw, below right=of origin] {Merchant}; \node (auditor) [def, draw, above right=of origin]{Auditor}; \tikzstyle{C} = [color=black, line width=1pt] \draw [<-, C] (customer) -- (mint) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {withdraw coins}; \draw [<-, C] (mint) -- (merchant) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {deposit coins}; \draw [<-, C] (merchant) -- (customer) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {spend coins}; \draw [<-, C] (mint) -- (auditor) node [midway, above, sloped] (TextNode) {verify}; \end{tikzpicture} \caption{Taler's system model for the payment system is based on Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind}.} \label{fig:cmm} \end{figure} Taler was designed for use in a modern social-liberal society, which we believe needs a payment system with the following properties: \begin{description} \item[Customer Anonymity] It must be impossible for mints, merchants and even a global active adversary, to trace the spending behavior of a customer. \item[Unlinkability] Merchants must not be able to tell if two transactions were performed by the same customer. It must be infeasible to link a set of transactions to the same (anonymous) customer. %, even when taking aborted transactions into account. \item[Taxability] In many current legal systems, it is the responsibility of the merchant to deduct (sales) taxes from purchases made by customers, or to pay (income) taxes for payments received for work. %Taxation is neccessary for the state to %provide legitimate social functions, such as education. Thus, a payment %system must facilitate sales, income and transaction taxes. This specifically means that the state must be able to audit merchants (or generally anybody receiving money), and thus the receiver of electronic cash must be easily identifiable. %non-anonymous, as this would enable tax fraud. \item[Verifiability] The payment system should try to minimize the trust necessary between the participants. In particular, digital signatures should be used extensively in order to be able to resolve disputes between the involved parties. Nevertheless, customers must never be able to defraud anyone, and merchants must at best be able to defraud their customers by not delivering the on the agreed contract. Neither merchants nor customers must ever be able to commit fraud against the mint. Both customers and merchants must receive cryptographic proofs of bad behavior in case of protocol violations by the mint. Thus, only the mint will have to be tightly audited and regulated. The design must make it easy to audit the finances of the mint. \item[Ease of Deployment] %The system should be easy to deploy for % real-world applications. In order to lower the entry barrier and % acceptance of the system, a gateway to the existing financial % system should be provided, i.e. by integrating internet-banking % protocols such as HBCI/FinTAN. The digital currency should be tied 1:1 to existing currencies (such as EUR or USD) to avoid exposing citizens to unnecessary risks from currency fluctuations. Moreover, the system must have a free software reference implementation and an open protocol standard. % The protocol should % be able to run easily over HTTP(S). \item[Low resource consumption] In order to minimize the operating costs and environmental impact of the payment system, it must avoid the reliance on expensive and ``wasteful'' computations such as proof-of-work. \item[Fractional payments] The payment system needs to handle both small and large payments in an efficient and reliable manner. Thus, coins cannot just be issued in the smallest unit of currency, and a mechanism to give {\em change} must be provided to ensure that customers with sufficient total funds can always spend them. For example, a customer may want to pay \EUR{49,99} using a \EUR{100,00} coin. The system must then support giving change in the form of say two fresh \EUR{0,01} and \EUR{50,00} coins. Those coins must be {\em unlinkable}: an adversary should not be able to relate transactions with either of the new coins to the original \EUR{100,00} coin or transaction or the other change being generated. \end{description} Instead of using cryptographic methods like restrictive blind signatures to achieve divisiblity, Taler's fractional payments use a simpler, more powerful mechanism. In Taler, a coin is not simply a unique random token, but a private key. Thus, the transfer of a coin can be performed by signing a message using this private key. Thus, the customer can simply specify the fraction of a coin's value that is to be paid to the merchant in the cryptographically signed deposit message given to the merchant. A key contribution of Taler is the {\em refresh} protocol, which enables a customer to exchange the residual value of a coin for fresh coins, thereby providing unlinkable change. Using online checks, the mint can trivially ensure that all transactions involving the same coin do not exceed the total value of the coin. Online fraud detection can create problems if the network fails during the initial steps of a transaction. For example, a law enforcement agency might try to entrap a customer by offering illicit goods and then cancelling the transaction after learning the public key of the coin. This is equivalent to a benign merchant giving a dissatisfied (anonymous) customer a {\em refund} by sending a message affirming the cancellation. If the customer later spends the refunded coin on a purchase with shipping, the state can link the two transactions and might be able to use the shipping address to deanonymize the customer. As with support for fractional payments, Taler addresses this problem by allowing customers to refresh coins, thereby destroying the link between the refunded (or aborted) transaction and the coin. Taler ensures that the {\em entity} of the user owning the new coin is the same as the entity of the user owning the old coin, thus making sure that the refreshing protocol cannot be abused for money laundering or other illicit transactions. \section{Related Work} \subsection{Blockchain-based currencies} In recent years, a class of decentralized electronic payment systems, based on collectively recorded and verified append-only public ledgers, have gained immense popularity. The most well-known protocol in this class is Bitcoin~\cite{nakamoto2008bitcoin}. An initial concern with Bitcoin was the lack of anonymity, as all Bitcoin transactions are recorded for eternity, which can enable identification of users. In theory, this concern has been addressed with the Zerocoin extension to the protocol~\cite{miers2013zerocoin}. While these protocols dispense with the need for a central, trusted authority and provide anonymity, we argue there are some major, irredeemable problems inherent in these systems: \begin{itemize} \item Bitcoins are not (easily) taxable. The legality and legitimacy of this aspect is questionable. The Zerocoin extension would only make this worse. \item Bitcoins can not be bound to any fiat currency, and are subject to significant value fluctuations. While such fluctuations may be acceptable for high-risk investments, they make Bitcoin unsuitable as a medium of exchange. \item The computational puzzles solved by Bitcoin nodes with the purpose of securing the block chain consume a considerable amount of computational resources and thus energy. Thus, Bitcoin does not represent an environmentally responsible design. \item Anyone can easily start an alternative Bitcoin transaction chain (a so-called AltCoin) and, if successful, reap the benefits of the low cost to initially create coins via computation. As a result, dozens of AltCoins have been created, often without any significant changes to the technology. A large number of AltCoins creates additional overheads for currency exchange and exascerbates the problems with currency fluctuations. \end{itemize} GreenCoinX\footnote{\url{https://www.greencoinx.com/}} is a more recent AltCoin where the company promises to identify the owner of each coin via e-mail addresses and phone numbers. While it is unclear from their technical description how this identification would be enforced against a determined adversary, the resulting payment system would also merely impose a totalitarian financial panopticon on a BitCoin-style money supply and transaction model, thus largely combining what we would consider to be the drawbacks of these existing systems. \subsection{Chaum-style electronic cash} Taler builds on ideas from Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind}, who proposed a digital payment system that would provide (some) customer anonymity while disclosing the identity of the merchants. Chaum's digital cash (DigiCash) system had some limitations and ultimately failed to be widely adopted. In our assessment, key reasons for DigiCash's failure that Taler avoids include: \begin{itemize} \item The use of patents to protect the technology; a payment system must be libre --- free software --- to have a chance for widespread adoption. \item The use of off-line payments and thus deferred detection of double-spending, which could require the mint to attempt to recover funds from customers via the legal system. This creates a significant business risk for the mint, as the system is not self-enforcing from the perspective of the mint. In 1983 off-line payments might have been a necessary feature. However, today requiring network connectivity is feasible and avoids the business risks associated with deferred fraud detection. \item % In addition to the risk of legal disputes with fradulent % merchants and customers, Chaum's published design does not clearly limit the financial damage a mint might suffer from the disclosure of its private online signing key. \item Chaum did not support fractional payments or refunds without breaking customer anonymity. %, and Brand's % extensions for fractional payments broke unlinkability and thus % limited anonymity. % \item Chaum's system was implemented at a time where the US market % was still dominated by paper checks and the European market was % fragmented into dozens of currencies. Today, SEPA provides a % unified currency and currency transfer method for most of Europe, % significantly lowering the barrier to entry into this domain for % a larger market. \end{itemize} Chaum's original digital cash system~\cite{chaum1983blind} was extended by Brands~\cite{brands1993efficient} with the ability to {\em divide} coins and thus spend (certain) fractions of a coin using restrictive blind signatures. Compared to Taler, performing fractional payments is cryptographically way more expensive and moreover the transactions performed with ``divisions'' from the same coin do become linkable. % %Some argue that the focus on technically perfect but overwhelmingly %complex protocols, as well as the the lack of usable, practical %solutions lead to an abandonment of these ideas by %practitioners~\cite{selby2004analyzing}. % To our knowledge, the only publicly available effort to implement Chaum's idea is Opencoin~\cite{dent2008extensions}. However, Opencoin seems to be neither actively developed nor used, and it is not clear to what degree the implementation is even complete. Only a partial description of the Opencoin protocol is available to date. \subsection{Peppercoin} Peppercoin~\cite{rivest2004peppercoin} is a microdonation protocol. The main idea of the protocol is to reduce transaction costs by minimizing the number of transactions that are processed directly by the mint. Instead of always paying, the customer ``gambles'' with the merchant for each microdonation. Only if the merchant wins, the microdonation is upgraded to a macropayment to be deposited at the mint. Peppercoin does not provide customer-anonymity. The proposed statistical method for mints detecting fraudulent cooperation between customers and merchants at the expense of the mint not only creates legal risks for the mint (who has to make a statistical argument), but also would require the mint to learn about microdonations where the merchant did not get upgraded to a macropayment. Thus, it is unclear how Peppercoin would actually reduce the computational burden on the mint. \section{Design} The payment system we propose is built on the blind signature primitive proposed by Chaum, but extended with additional constructions to provide unlinkability, online fraud detection and taxability. As with Chaum, the Taler system comprises three principal types of actors (Figure~\ref{fig:cmm}): The \emph{customer} is interested in receiving goods or services from the \emph{merchant} in exchange for payment. When making a transaction, both the customer and the merchant must agree on the same \emph{mint}, which serves as an intermediary for the financial transaction between the two. The mint is responsible for allowing the customer to obtain the anonymous digital currency and for enabling the merchant to convert the digital coins back to some traditional currency. The \emph{auditor} assures customers and merchants that the mint operates correctly. \subsection{Security model} Taler's security model assumes that cryptographic primitives are secure and that each participant is under full control of his system. The contact information of the mint is known to both customer and merchant from the start. Furthermore, the merchant communication's authenticity is assured to the customer (for example using X.509 certificates~\cite{rfc5280}) and we assume that an anonymous, reliable bi-directional communication channel can be established by the customer to both the mint and the merchant. The mint is trusted to hold funds of its customers and to forward them when receiving the respective deposit instructions from the merchants. Customer and merchant can have some assurances about the mint's liquidity and operation, as the mint has proven reserves, is subject to the law, and can have its business is regularly audited (for example, by the government or a trusted third party auditor). Regular audits of the mint's accounts must reveal any possible fraud before the mint is allowed to destroy the corresponding accumulated cryptographic proofs and book its fees as profits. % The merchant is trusted to deliver the service or goods to the customer upon receiving payment. The customer can seek legal relief to achieve this, as he must get cryptographic proofs of the contract and that he paid his obligations. % Neither the merchant nor the customer may have any ability to {\em effectively} defraud the mint or the state collecting taxes. Here, ``effectively'' means that the expected return for fraud is negative. Note that customers do not need to be trusted in any way, and that in particular it is never necessary for anyone to try to recover funds from customers using legal means. \subsection{Taxability and Entities} Electronic coins are trivially copied between machines. Thus, we must clarify what kinds of operations can even be expected to be taxed. After all, without instrusive measures to take away control of the computing platform from its users, copying an electronic wallet from one computer to another can hardly be prevented by a payment system. Furthermore, it would also hardly be appropriate to tax the moving of funds between two computers owned by the same entity. We thus need to clarify which kinds of transfers we expect to tax. Taler is supposed to ensure that the state can tax {\em transactions}. A {\em transaction} is a transfer where it is assured that one entity gains control over funds while at the same time another entity looses control over those funds. We further restrict transactions to apply only to the transfer of funds between {\em mutually distrustful} entities. Two entities are assumed to be mutually distrustful if they are unwilling to share control over coins. If a private key is shared between two entities, then both entities have equal access to the credentials represented by the private key. In a payment system this means that either entity could spent the associated funds. Assuming the payment system has effective double-spending detection, this means that either entity has to constantly fear that the funds might no longer be available to it. Thus, sharing coins by copying a private key implies mutual trust between the two parties, in which case Taler will treat them as the same entity. In Taler, making funds available by copying a private key and thus sharing control is {\bf not} considered a {\em transaction} and thus {\bf not} recorded for taxation. Taler ensures taxability only when some entity acquires exclusive control over the value of digital coins, which requires an interaction with the mint. For such transactions, the state can obtain information from the mint (or the bank) that identifies the entity that received the digital coins as well as the exact value of those coins. Taler also allows the mint (and thus the state) to learn the value of digital coins withdrawn by a customer --- but not how, where or when they were spent. \subsection{Anonymity} An anonymous communication channel (e.g. via Tor~\cite{tor-design}) is used for all communication between the customer and the merchant. Thus, the customer can remain anonymous limited only by the anonymous communication channel; however, the payment system does additionally reveal that the customer is one of the patrons of the mint. Naturally, the customer-merchant business operation might leak other information about the customer, such as a shipping address. Information leakage from shipping is in theory avoidable~\cite{apod}. Nevertheless, for Taler as a payment system, information leakage specific to the business logic is outside of the scope of the design. The customer may use an anonymous communication channel for the communication with the mint to avoid leaking IP address information; however, the mint will anyway be able to determine the customer's identity from the wire transfer or some other authentication process that the customer initiates to withdraw anonymous digital cash. In fact, this is desirable as there might be rules and regulations designed to limit the amount of anonymous digital cash that an individual customer can withdraw in a given time period, similar to how states today sometimes impose limits on cash withdrawals~\cite{france2015cash,greece2015cash}. Taler is only anonymous with respect to {\em payments}, as the mint will be unable to link the known identity of the customer that withdrew anonymous digital currency to the {\em purchase} performed later at the merchant. In this respect, Taler provides exactly the same scheme for unconditional anonymous payments as was proposed by Chaum~\cite{chaum1983blind,chaum1990untraceable} over 30 years ago. While the customer thus has anonymity for purchases, the mint will always learn the merchant's identity in order to credit the merchant's account. This is simply necessary for taxation, as Taler is supposed to make information about funds received by any entity transparent to the state. % Technically, the merchant could still %use an anonymous communication channel to communicate with the mint. %However, in order to receive the traditional currency the mint will %require (SEPA) account details for the deposit. %As both the initial transaction between the customer and the mint as %well as the transactions between the merchant and the mint do not have %to be done anonymously, there might be a formal business contract %between the customer and the mint and the merchant and the mint. Such %a contract may provide customers and merchants some assurance that %they will actually receive the traditional currency from the mint %given cryptographic proof about the validity of the transaction(s). %However, given the business overheads for establishing such contracts %and the natural goal for the mint to establish a reputation and to %minimize cost, it is more likely that the mint will advertise its %external auditors and proven reserves and thereby try to convince %customers and merchants to trust it without a formal contract. \subsection{Coins} A \emph{coin} in Taler is a public-private key pair which derives its financial value from a signature over the coin's public key by a mint. The mint is expected to have multiple {\em coin signing key} pairs available for signing, each representing a different coin denomination. The coin signing keys have an expiration date (typically measured in years), and coins signed with a coin signing key must be spent (or exchanged for new coins) before that expiration date. This allows the mint to limit the amount of state it needs to keep to detect double spending attempts. Furthermore, the mint is expected to use each coin signing key only for a limited number of coins, for example by limiting its use to sign coins to a week or a month. That way, if the private coin signing key were to be compromised, the mint can detect this once more coins are redeemed than the total that was signed into existence using the respective coin signing key. In this case, the mint can allow the original set of customers to exchange the coins that were signed with the compromised private key, while refusing further transactions from merchants if they involve those coins. As a result, the financial damage of losing a private signing key can be limited to at most twice the amount originally signed with that key. To ensure that the mint does not enable deanonymization of users by signing each coin with a fresh coin signing key, the mint must publicly announce the coin signing keys in advance. Those announcements are expected to be signed with an off-line long-term private {\em master signing key} of the mint and the auditor. Before a customer can withdraw a coin from the mint, he has to pay the mint the value of the coin, as well as processing fees. This is done using other means of payments, such as wire transfers or by having a personal {\em reserve} at the mint (which is equivalent to a bank account with a positive balance). Taler assumes that the customer has a {\em withdrawal authorization key} to identify himself as authorized to withdraw funds from the reserve. By signing the withdrawal request messages using the withdrawal authorization key, the customer can prove to the mint that he is the individual authorized to withdraw anonymous digital coins from the reserve. The mint will record the withdrawal messages with the reserve record as proof that the anonymous digital coin was created for the correct customer. We note that the specifics of how the customer authenticates to the mint are orthogonal to the rest of the system, and multiple methods can be supported. %To put it differently, unlike %modern cryptocurrencies like BitCoin, Taler's design simply %acknowledges that primitive accumulation~\cite{engels1844} predates %the system and that a secure method to authenticate owners exists. After a coin is minted, the customer is the only entity that knows the private key of the coin, making him the \emph{owner} of the coin. The coin can be identified by the mint by its public key; however, due to the use of blind signatures, the mint does not learn the public key during the minting process. Knowledge of the private key of the coin enables the owner to spent the coin. If the private key is shared with others, they also become owners of the coin. \subsection{Coin spending} To spend a coin, the coin's owner needs to sign a {\em deposit request} specifying the amount, the merchant's account information and a {\em business transaction-specific hash} using the coin's private key. A merchant can then transfer this permission of the coin's owner to the mint to obtain the amount in traditional currency. If the customer is cheating and the coin was already spent, the mint provides cryptographic proof of the fraud to the merchant, who will then refuse the transaction. The mint is typically expected to transfer the funds to the merchant using a wire transfer or by crediting the merchant's individual account, depending on what is appropriate to the domain of the traditional currency. To allow exact payments without requiring the customer to keep a large amount of ``change'' in stock and possibly perform thousands of signatures for larger transactions, the payment systems allows partial spending where just a fraction of a coin's total value is transferred. Consequently, the mint the must not only store the identifiers of spent coins, but also the fraction of the coin that has been spent. \subsection{Refreshing Coins} In this and other scenarios it is thus possible that a customer has revealed the public key of a coin to a merchant, but not ultimately signed over the full value of the coin. If the customer then continues to directly use the coin in other transactions, merchants and the mint could link the various transactions as they all share the same public key for the coin. Thus, the owner might want to exchange such a {\em dirty} coin for a {\em fresh} coin to ensure unlinkability of future transactions with the previous operation. Even if a coin is not dirty, the owner of a coin may want to exchange a coin if the respective coin signing key is about to expire. All of these operations are supported with the {\em coin refreshing protocol}, which allows the owner of a coin to {\em melt} existing coins (redeeming their remaining value) for fresh coins with a new public-private key pairs. Refreshing does not use the ordinary spending operation as the owner of a coin should not have to pay taxes on this operation. Because of this, the refreshing protocol must assure that owner stays the same. After all, the coin refreshing protocol must not be usable for transactions, as transactions in Taler must be taxable. Thus, one main goal of the refreshing protocol is that the mint must not be able to link the fresh coin's public key to the public key of the dirty coin. The second main goal is to enable the mint to ensure that the owner of the dirty coin can determine the private key of the fresh coin. This way, refreshing cannot be used to construct a transaction --- the owner of the dirty coin remains in control of the fresh coin. %As with other operations, the refreshing protocol must also protect %the mint from double-spending; similarly, the customer has to have %cryptographic evidence if there is any misbehaviour by the mint. %Finally, the mint may choose to charge a transaction fee for %refreshing by reducing the value of the generated fresh coins %in relation to the value of the melted coins. % %Naturally, all such transaction fees should be clearly stated as part %of the business contract offered by the mint to customers and %merchants. \section{Taler's Cryptographic Protocols} % In this section, we describe the protocols for Taler in detail. For the sake of brevity, we assume that a recipient of a signed message always first checks that the signature is valid, even though this is not explicitly stated below. Also, whenever a signed message is transmitted, it is assumed that the receiver is told the public key (or knows it from the context) and that the signature contains additional identification as to the purpose of the signature, making it impossible to use a signature in a different context. When the mint signs messages (not coins), an {\em online message signing key} of the mint is used. The mint's long-term offline key is used to certify both the coin signing keys as well as the online message signing key of the mint. The mint's long-term offline key is assumed to be well-known to both customers and merchants, for example because it is certified by the auditors. As we are dealing with financial transactions, we explicitly describe whenever entities need to safely commit data to persistent storage. As long as those commitments persist, the protocol can be safely resumed at any step. Commitments to disk are cummulative, that is an additional commitment does not erase the previously committed information. Keys and thus coins always have a well-known expiration date; information committed to disk can be discarded after the expiration date of the respective public key. Customers can also discard information once the respective coins have been fully spent, and merchants may discard information once payments from the mint have been received (assuming records are also no longer needed for tax authorities). The mint's bank transfers dealing in traditional currency are expected to be recorded for tax authorities to ensure taxability. \subsection{Withdrawal} To withdraw anonymous digital coins, the customer performs the following interaction with the mint: \begin{enumerate} \item The customer identifies a mint with an auditor-approved coin signing public-private key pair $K := (K_s, K_p)$ and randomly generates: \begin{itemize} \item withdrawal key $W := (W_s,W_p)$ with private key $W_s$ and public key $W_p$, \item coin key $C := (C_s,C_p)$ with private key $C_s$ and public key $C_p$, \item blinding factor $b$, and commits $\langle W, C, b \rangle$ to disk. \end{itemize} \item The customer transfers an amount of money corresponding to (at least) $K_p$ to the mint, with $W_p$ in the subject line of the transaction. \item The mint receives the transaction and credits the $W_p$ reserve with the respective amount in its database. \item The customer sends $S_W(E_b(C_p))$ to the mint to request withdrawal of $C$; here, $E_b$ denotes Chaum-style blinding with blinding factor $b$. \item The mint checks if the same withdrawal request was issued before; in this case, it sends $S_{K}(E_b(C_p))$ to the customer.\footnote{Here $S_K$ denotes a Chaum-style blind signature with private key $K_s$.} If this is a fresh withdrawal request, the mint performs the following transaction: \begin{enumerate} \item checks if the reserve $W_p$ has sufficient funds for a coin of value corresponding to $K_p$ \item stores the withdrawal request $\langle S_W(E_b(C_p)), S_K(E_b(C_p)) \rangle$ in its database for future reference, \item deducts the amount corresponding to $K_p$ from the reserve, \item and sends $S_{K}(E_b(C_p))$ to the customer. \end{enumerate} If the guards for the transaction fail, the mint sends a descriptive error back to the customer, with proof that it operated correctly (i.e. by showing the transaction history for the reserve). \item The customer computes (and verifies) the unblinded signature $S_K(C_p) = D_b(S_K(E_b(C_p)))$. The customer writes $\langle S_K(C_p), C_s \rangle$ to disk (effectively adding the coin to the local wallet) for future use. \end{enumerate} We note that the authorization to create and access a reserve using a withdrawal key $W$ is just one way to establish that the customer is authorized to withdraw funds. If a mint has other ways to securely authenticate customers and establish that they are authorized to withdraw funds, those can also be used with Taler. \subsection{Exact and partial spending} A customer can spend coins at a merchant, under the condition that the merchant trusts the specific mint that minted the coin. Merchants are identified by their public key $M := (M_s, M_p)$, which must be known to the customer apriori. The following steps describe the protocol between customer, merchant and mint for a transaction involving a coin $C := (C_s, C_p)$, which was previously signed by a mint's denomination key $K$, i.e. the customer posses $\widetilde{C} := S_K(C_p)$: \begin{enumerate} \item\label{contract} Let $\vec{D} := D_1, \ldots, D_n$ be the list of mints accepted by the merchant where each $D_i$ is a mint's public key. The merchant creates a digitally signed contract $\mathcal{A} := S_M(m, f, a, H(p, r), \vec{D})$ where $m$ is an identifier for this transaction, $a$ is data relevant to the contract indicating which services or goods the merchant will deliver to the customer, $f$ is the price of the offer, and $p$ is the merchant's payment information (e.g. his IBAN number) and $r$ is a random nounce. The merchant commits $\langle \mathcal{A} \rangle$ to disk and sends $\mathcal{A}$ it to the customer. \item\label{deposit} The customer must possess or acquire a coin minted by a mint that is accepted by the merchant, i.e. $K$ should be publicly signed by some $D_i \in \{D_1, D_2, \ldots, D_n\}$, and has a value $\geq f$. (The customer can of course also use multiple coins where the total value adds up to the cost of the transaction and run the following steps for each of the coins. However, for simplicity of the exposition here we will assume that one coin is sufficient.) % The customer then generates a \emph{deposit-permission} $\mathcal{D} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, m, f, H(a), H(p,r), M_p)$ and sends $\langle \mathcal{D}, D_i\rangle$ to the merchant, where $D_i$ is the mint which signed $K$. \item The merchant gives $(\mathcal{D}, p, r)$ to the mint, revealing $p$ only to the mint. \item The mint validates $\mathcal{D}$ and checks for double spending. If the coin has been involved in previous transactions, it sends an error with the records from the previous transactions back to the merchant. % If double spending is not found, the mint commits $\langle \mathcal{D} \rangle$ to disk and notifies the merchant that the deposit operation was successful. \item The merchant commits and forwards the notification from the mint to the customer, confirming the success (or failure) of the operation. \end{enumerate} If a transaction is aborted after Step~\ref{deposit}, subsequent transactions with the same coin could be linked to the coin, but not directly to the coin's owner. The same applies to partially spent coins (where $f$ is smaller than the actual value of the coin). To unlink subsequent transactions from a coin, the customer has to execute the coin refreshing protocol with the mint. %\begin{figure}[h] %\centering %\begin{tikzpicture} % %\tikzstyle{def} = [node distance= 1em, inner sep=.5em, outer sep=.3em]; %\node (origin) at (0,0) {}; %\node (offer) [def,below=of origin]{make offer (merchant $\rightarrow$ customer)}; %\node (A) [def,below=of offer]{permit lock (customer $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; %\node (B) [def,below=of A]{apply lock (merchant $\rightarrow$ mint)}; %\node (C) [def,below=of B]{confirm (or refuse) lock (mint $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; %\node (D) [def,below=of C]{sign contract (merchant $\rightarrow$ customer)}; %\node (E) [def,below=of D]{permit deposit (customer $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; %\node (F) [def,below=of E]{make deposit (merchant $\rightarrow$ mint)}; %\node (G) [def,below=of F]{transfer confirmation (mint $\rightarrow$ merchant)}; % %\tikzstyle{C} = [color=black, line width=1pt] %\draw [->,C](offer) -- (A); %\draw [->,C](A) -- (B); %\draw [->,C](B) -- (C); %\draw [->,C](C) -- (D); %\draw [->,C](D) -- (E); %\draw [->,C](E) -- (F); %\draw [->,C](F) -- (G); % %\draw [->,C, bend right, shorten <=2mm] (E.east) % to[out=-135,in=-45,distance=3.8cm] node[left] {aggregate} (D.east); %\end{tikzpicture} %\caption{Interactions between a customer, merchant and mint in the coin spending % protocol} %\label{fig:spending_protocol_interactions} %\end{figure} \subsection{Refreshing} \label{sec:refreshing} The following refreshing protocol is executed in order to melt a dirty coin $C'$ of denomination $K$ to obtain a fresh coin $\widetilde{C}$ with the same denomination. In pratice, Taler uses a natural extension where multiple fresh coins are generated a the same time to enable giving precise change matching any amount. In the protocol, $\kappa \ge 3$ is a security parameter and $G$ is the generator of the elliptic curve. \begin{enumerate} \item For each $i = 1,\ldots,\kappa$, the customer \begin{itemize} \item randomly generates transfer key $T^{(i)} := \left(t^{(i)}_s,T^{(i)}_p\right)$ where $T^{(i)}_p := t^{(i)}_s G$, \item randomly generates coin key pair \\ $C^{(i)} := \left(c_s^{(i)}, C_p^{(i)}\right)$ where $C^{(i)}_p := c^{(i)}_s G$, \item randomly generates blinding factors $b_i$, \item computes $E_i := E_{K_i}\left(c_s^{(i)}, b_i\right)$ where $K_i := H(c'_s T_p^{(i)})$. (The encryption key $K_i$ is computed by multiplying the private key $c'_s$ of the original coin with the point on the curve that represents the public key $T^{(i)}_p$ of the transfer key $T^{(i)}$. This is basically DH between coin and transfer key.), \end{itemize} and commits $\langle C', \vec{T}, \vec{C}, \vec{b} \rangle$ to disk. \item The customer computes $B_i := E_{b_i}(C^{(i)}_p)$ for $i=1,\ldots,\kappa$ and sends a commitment $S_{C'}(\vec{E}, \vec{B}, \vec{T_p}))$ to the mint; here $E_{b_i}$ denotes Chaum-style blinding with blinding factor $b_i$. \item The mint generates a random $\gamma$ with $1 \le \gamma \le \kappa$ and marks $C'_p$ as spent by committing $\langle C', \gamma, S_{C'}(\vec{E}, \vec{B}, \vec{T}) \rangle$ to disk. \item The mint sends $S_K(C'_p, \gamma)$ to the customer.\footnote{Instead of $K$, it is also possible to use any equivalent mint signing key known to the customer here, as $K$ merely serves as proof to the customer that the mint selected this particular $\gamma$.} \item The customer commits $\langle C', S_K(C'_p, \gamma) \rangle$ to disk. \item The customer computes $\mathfrak{R} := \left(t_s^{(i)}, C_p^{(i)}, b_i\right)_{i \ne \gamma}$ and sends $S_{C'}(\mathfrak{R})$ to the mint. \item \label{step:refresh-ccheck} The mint checks whether $\mathfrak{R}$ is consistent with the commitments; specifically, it computes for $i \not= \gamma$: \vspace{-2ex} \begin{minipage}{5cm} \begin{align*} \overline{K}_i :&= H(t_s^{(i)} C_p'), \\ (\overline{c}_s^{(i)}, \overline{b}_i) :&= D_{\overline{K}_i}(E_i), \\ \overline{C}^{(i)}_p :&= \overline{c}_s^{(i)} G, \end{align*} \end{minipage} \begin{minipage}{5cm} \begin{align*} \overline{B}_i :&= E_{b_i}(C_p^{(i)}), \\ \overline{T}_i :&= t_s^{(i)} G, \\ \end{align*} \end{minipage} and checks if $\overline{C}^{(i)}_p = C^{(i)}_p$ and $H(E_i, \overline{B}_i, \overline{T}^{(i)}_p) = H(E_i, B_i, T^{(i)}_p)$ and $\overline{T}_i = T_i$. \item \label{step:refresh-done} If the commitments were consistent, the mint sends the blind signature $\widetilde{C} := S_{K}(B_\gamma)$ to the customer. Otherwise, the mint responds with an error the value of $C'$. \end{enumerate} %\subsection{N-to-M Refreshing} % %TODO: Explain, especially subtleties regarding session key / the spoofing attack that requires signature. \subsection{Linking} For a coin that was successfully refreshed, the mint responds to a request $S_{C'}(\mathtt{link})$ with $(T^{(\gamma)}_p$, $E_{\gamma}, \widetilde{C})$. % This allows the owner of the melted coin to also obtain the private key of the new coin, even if the refreshing protocol was illicitly executed with the help of another party who generated $C'_s$ and only provided $\vec{C'_p}$ and other required information to the old owner. As a result, linking ensures that access to the new coins minted by the refresh protocol is always {\em shared} with the owner of the melted coins. This makes it impossible to abuse the refresh protocol for {\em transactions}. The linking request is not expected to be used at all during ordinary operation of Taler. If the refresh protocol is used by Alice to obtain change as designed, she already knows all of the information and thus has little reason to request it via the linking protocol. The fundamental reason why the mint must provide the link protocol is simply to provide a threat: if Bob were to use the refresh protocol for a transaction of funds from Alice to him, Alice may use a link request to gain shared access to Bob's coins. Thus, this threat prevents Alice and Bob from abusing the refresh protocol to evade taxation on transactions. If Bob trusts Alice to not execute the link protocol, then they can already conspire to evade taxation by simply exchanging the original private coin keys. This is permitted in our taxation model as with such trust they are assumed to be the same entity. The auditor can anonymously check if the mint correctly implements the link request, thus preventing the mint operator from legally disabling this protocol component. Without the link operation, Taler would devolve into a payment system where both sides can be anonymous, and thus no longer provide taxability. \subsection{Error handling} During operation, there are three main types of errors that are expected. First, in the case of faulty clients, the responding server will generate an error message with detailed cryptographic proofs demonstrating that the client was faulty, for example by providing proof of double-spending or providing the previous commit and the location of the missmatch in the case of the reveal step in the refresh protocol. It is also possible that the server may claim that the client has been violating the protocol. In these cases, the clients should verify any proofs provided and if they are acceptable, notify the user that they are somehow faulty. Similar, if the server indicates that the client is violating the protocol, the client should record the interaction and enable the user to file a bug report. The second case is a faulty mint service provider. Such faults will be detected because of protocol violations (for example, by providing a faulty proof or no proof). In this case, the client is expected to notify the auditor, providing a transcript of the interaction. The auditor can then (anonymously) replay the transaction, and either provide the (now) correct response to the client or take appropriate legal action against the faulty provider. The third case are transient failures, such as network failures or temporary hardware failures at the mint service provider. Here, the client may receive an explicit protocol indication (such as an HTTP response code 500 ``internal server error'') or simply no response. The appropriate behavior for the client is to automatically retry (after 1s, twice more at randomized times within 1 minute). If those three attempts fail, the user should be informed about the delay. The client should then retry another three times within the next 24h, and after that time the auditor be informed about the outage. Using this process, short term failures should be effectively obscured from the user, while malicious behavior is reported to the auditor who can then presumably rectify the situation, for example by shutting down the operator (while providing an opportunity for customers to receive refunds for the coins in circulation). To ensure that such refunds are possible, the operator is expected to always provide adequate securities for the amount of coins in circulation as part of the certification process. \subsection{Refunds} The refresh protocol offers an easy way to enable refunds to customers, even if they are anonymous. Refunds can be supported by including a public signing key of the mechant in the transaction details, and having the customer keep the private key of the spent coins on file. Given this, the merchant can simply sign a {\em refund confirmation} and share it with the mint (and the customer). Assuming the mint has a way to recover the funds from the merchant (or simply not performed the wire transfer yet), the mint can simply add the value of the refunded transaction back to the original coin, re-enabling those funds to be spent again by the original customer. The (anonymous) customer -- but nobody else -- can then use the refresh protocol to melt the refunded coin and create a fresh coin that is unlinkable to the refunded transaction. \section{Discussion} Taler's security is largely equivalent to that of Chaum's original design without online checks (and without the cut-and-choose revelation of double-spending customers for offline spending). We specifically note that the digital equivalent of the ``Columbian Black Market Exchange''~\cite{fatf1997} is a theoretical problem for both Chaum and Taler, as individuals with a strong mutual trust foundation can simply copy electronic coins and thereby establish a limited form of black transfers. However, unlike the situation with physical checks with blank recipients in the Columbian black market, the transitivity is limited as each participant can deposit the electronic coins and thereby cheat any other participant, while in the Columbian black market each participant only needs to trust the issuer of the check and not also all previous owners of the physical check. As with any unconditionally anonymous payment system, the ``Perfect Crime'' attack~\cite{solms1992perfect} where blackmail is used to force the mint to issue anonymous coins also continues to apply in principle. However, as mentioned Taler does faciliate limits on withdrawals, which we believe is a better trade-off than the problematic escrow systems where the necessary intransparency actually facilitates voluntary cooperation between the mint and criminals~\cite{sander1999escrow} and where state can selectively deanonymize activists to support the deep state's quest for absolute security. \subsection{Offline Payments} Chaum's original proposals for anonymous digital cash avoided the need for online interactions with the mint to detect double spending by providing a means to deanonymize customers involved in double-spending. We believe that this is problematic as the mint or the merchant will then still need out-of-band means to recover funds from the customer, which may be impossible in practice. In contrast, in our design only the mint may try to defraud the other participants and disappear. While this is still a risk, and regular financial audits are required to protect against it, this is more manageable and significantly cheaper compared to recovering funds via the court system from customers. Chaum's method for offline payments would also be incompatible with the refreshing protocol (Section~\ref{sec:refreshing}) which enables the crucial feature of giving unlinkable change. The reason is that if the owner's identity were embedded in coins, it would be leaked to the mint as part of the reveal operation in the cut-and-choose operation of the refreshing protocol. %\subsection{Merchant Tax Audits} % %For a tax audit on the merchant, the mint includes the business %transaction-specific hash in the transfer of the traditional %currency. A tax auditor can then request the merchant to reveal %(meaningful) details about the business transaction ($\mathcal{D}$, %$a$, $p$, $r$), including proof that applicable taxes were paid. % %If a merchant is not able to provide theses values, he can be %subjected to financial penalties by the state in relation to the %amount transferred by the traditional currency transfer. \subsection{Cryptographic proof vs. evidence} In this paper we have use the term ``proof'' in many places as the protocol provides cryptographic proofs of which parties behave correctly or incorrectly. However, as~\cite{fc2014murdoch} point out, in practice financial systems need to provide evidence that holds up in courts. Taler's implementation is designed to export evidence and upholds the core principles described in~\cite{fc2014murdoch}. In particular, in providing the cryptographic proofs as evidence none of the participants have to disclose their core secrets, the process is covered by standard testing proceedures, and the full trusted computing base (TCB) is public and free software. %\subsection{System Performance} % %We performed some initial performance measurements for the various %operations on our mint implementation. The main conclusion was that %the computational and bandwidth cost for transactions described in %this paper is smaller than $10^{-3}$ cent/transaction, and thus %dwarfed by the other business costs for the mint. However, this %figure excludes the cost of currency transfers using traditional %banking, which a mint operator would ultimately have to interact with. %Here, mint operators should be able to reduce their expenses by %aggregating multiple transfers to the same merchant. %\section{Conclusion} %We have presented an efficient electronic payment system that %simultaneously addresses the conflicting objectives created by the %citizen's need for privacy and the state's need for taxation. The %coin refreshing protocol makes the design flexible and enables a %variety of payment methods. The current balance and profits of the %mint are also easily determined, thus audits can be used to ensure %that the mint operates correctly. The libre implementation and open %protocol may finally enable modern society to upgrade to proper %electronic wallets with efficient, secure and privacy-preserving %transactions. % commented out for anonymized submission %\subsection*{Acknowledgements} %This work was supported by a grant from the Renewable Freedom Foundation. % FIXME: ARED? %We thank Tanja Lange and Dan Bernstein for feedback on an earlier %version of this paper, Nicolas Fournier for implementing and running %some performance benchmarks, and Richard Stallman, Hellekin Wolf, %Jacob Appelbaum for productive discussions and support. \bibliographystyle{alpha} \bibliography{taler,rfc} \newpage \appendix \section{Optional features} In this appendix we detail various optional features that can be added to the basic protocol to reduce transaction costs for certain interactions. However, we note that Taler's transaction costs are expected to be so low that these features are likely not particularly useful in practice: When we performed some initial performance measurements for the various operations on our mint implementation, the main conclusion was that the computational and bandwidth cost for transactions described in this paper is smaller than $10^{-3}$ cent/transaction, and thus dwarfed by the other business costs for the mint. We note that the $10^{-3}$ cent/transaction estimate excludes the cost of wire transfers using traditional banking, which a mint operator would ultimately have to interact with. Here, mint operators should be able to reduce their expenses by aggregating multiple transfers to the same merchant. As a result of the low cost of the interaction with the mint in Taler today, we expect that transactions with amounts below Taler's internal transaction costs to be economically meaningless. Nevertheless, we document various ways how such transactions could be achieved within Taler. \subsection{Incremental spending} For services that include pay-as-you-go billing, customers can over time sign deposit permissions for an increasing fraction of the value of a coin to be paid to a particular merchant. As checking with the mint for each increment might be expensive, the coin's owner can instead sign a {\em lock permission}, which allows the merchant to get an exclusive right to redeem deposit permissions for the coin for a limited duration. The merchant uses the lock permission to determine if the coin has already been spent and to ensure that it cannot be spent by another merchant for the {\em duration} of the lock as specified in the lock permission. If the coin has been spent or is already locked, the mint provides the owner's deposit or locking request and signature to prove the attempted fraud by the customer. Otherwise, the mint locks the coin for the expected duration of the transaction (and remembers the lock permission). The merchant and the customer can then finalize the business transaction, possibly exchanging a series of incremental payment permissions for services. Finally, the merchant then redeems the coin at the mint before the lock permission expires to ensure that no other merchant spends the coin first. \begin{enumerate} \item\label{offer2} The merchant sends an \emph{offer:} $\langle S_M(m, f), \vec{D} \rangle$ containing the price of the offer $f$, a transaction ID $m$ and the list of mints $D_1, \ldots, D_n$ accepted by the merchant where each $D_i$ is a mint's public key. \item\label{lock2} The customer must possess or acquire a coin minted by a mint that is accepted by the merchant, i.e. $K$ should be publicly signed by some $D_i \in \{D_1, D_2, \ldots, D_n\}$, and has a value $\geq f$. Customer then generates a \emph{lock-permission} $\mathcal{L} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, t, m, f, M_p)$ where $t$ specifies the time until which the lock is valid and sends $\langle \mathcal{L}, D_i\rangle$ to the merchant, where $D_i$ is the mint which signed $K$. \item The merchant asks the mint to apply the lock by sending $\langle \mathcal{L} \rangle$ to the mint. \item The mint validates $\widetilde{C}$ and detects double spending if there is a lock-permission record $S_c(\widetilde{C}, t', m', f', M_p')$ where $(t', m', f', M_p') \neq (t, m, f, M_p)$ or a \emph{deposit-permission} record for $C$ and sends it to the merchant, who can then use it prove to the customer and subsequently ask the customer to issue a new lock-permission. If double spending is not found, the mint commits $\langle \mathcal{L} \rangle$ to disk and notifies the merchant that locking was successful. \item\label{contract2} The merchant creates a digitally signed contract $\mathcal{A} := S_M(m, f, a, H(p, r))$ where $a$ is data relevant to the contract indicating which services or goods the merchant will deliver to the customer, and $p$ is the merchant's payment information (e.g. his IBAN number) and $r$ is an random nounce. The merchant commits $\langle \mathcal{A} \rangle$ to disk and sends it to the customer. \item The customer creates a \emph{deposit-permission} $\mathcal{D} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, f, m, M_p, H(a), H(p, r))$, commits $\langle \mathcal{A}, \mathcal{D} \rangle$ to disk and sends $\mathcal{D}$ to the merchant. \item\label{invoice_paid2} The merchant commits the received $\langle \mathcal{D} \rangle$ to disk. \item The merchant gives $(\mathcal{D}, p, r)$ to the mint, revealing his payment information. \item The mint verifies $(\mathcal{D}, p, r)$ for its validity. A \emph{deposit-permission} for a coin $C$ is valid if: \begin{itemize} \item $C$ is not refreshed already \item there exists no other \emph{deposit-permission} on disk for \\ $\mathcal{D'} := S_c(\widetilde{C}, f', m', M_p', H(a'), H(p', r'))$ for $C$ such that \\ $(f', m',M_p', H(a')) \neq (f, m, M_p, H(a))$ \item $H(p, r) := H(p', r')$ \end{itemize} If $C$ is valid and no other \emph{deposit-permission} for $C$ exists on disk, the mint does the following: \begin{enumerate} \item if a \emph{lock-permission} exists for $C$, it is deleted from disk. \item\label{transfer2} transfers an amount of $f$ to the merchant's bank account given in $p$. The subject line of the transaction to $p$ must contain $H(\mathcal{D})$. \item $\langle \mathcal{D}, p, r \rangle$ is commited to disk. \end{enumerate} If the deposit record $\langle \mathcal{D}, p, r \rangle$ already exists, the mint sends it to the merchant, but does not transfer money to $p$ again. \end{enumerate} To facilitate incremental spending of a coin $C$ in a single transaction, the merchant makes an offer in Step~\ref{offer2} with a maximum amount $f_{max}$ he is willing to charge in this transaction from the coin $C$. After obtaining the lock on $C$ for $f_{max}$, the merchant makes a contract in Step~\ref{contract2} with an amount $f \leq f_{max}$. The protocol follows with the following steps repeated after Step~\ref{invoice_paid2} whenever the merchant wants to charge an incremental amount up to $f_{max}$: \begin{enumerate} \setcounter{enumi}{4} \item The merchant generates a new contract $ \mathcal{A}' := S_M(m, f', a', H(p, r)) $ after obtaining the deposit-permission for a previous contract. Here $f'$ is the accumulated sum the merchant is charging the customer, of which the merchant has received a deposit-permission for $f$ from the previous contract \textit{i.e.}~$f ,C](offer) -- (A); %\draw [->,C](A) -- (B); %\draw [->,C](B) -- (C); %\draw [->,C](C) -- (D); %\draw [->,C](D) -- (E); %\draw [->,C](E) -- (F); %\draw [->,C](F) -- (G); % %\draw [->,C, bend right, shorten <=2mm] (E.east) % to[out=-135,in=-45,distance=3.8cm] node[left] {aggregate} (D.east); %\end{tikzpicture} %\caption{Interactions between a customer, merchant and mint in the coin spending % protocol} %\label{fig:spending_protocol_interactions} %\end{figure} \subsection{Probabilistic donations} Similar to Peppercoin, Taler supports probabilistic {\em micro}donations of coins to support cost-effective transactions for small amounts. We consider amounts to be ``micro'' if the value of the transaction is close or even below the business cost of an individual transaction to the mint. To support microdonations, an ordinary transaction is performed based on the result of a biased coin flip with a probability related to the desired transaction amount in relation to the value of the coin. More specifically, a microdonation of value $\epsilon$ is upgraded to a macropayment of value $m$ with a probability of $\frac{\epsilon}{m}$. Here, $m$ is chosen such that the business transaction cost at the mint is small in relation to $m$. The mint is only involved in the tiny fraction of transactions that are upgraded. On average both customers and merchants end up paying (or receiving) the expected amount $\epsilon$ per microdonation. Unlike Peppercoin, in Taler either the merchant wins and the customer looses the coin, or the merchant looses and the customer keeps the coin. Thus, there is no opportunity for the merchant and the customer to conspire against the mint. To determine if the coin is to be transferred, merchant and customer execute a secure coin flipping protocol~\cite{blum1981}. The commit values are included in the business contract and are revealed after the contract has been signed using the private key of the coin. If the coin flip is decided in favor of the merchant, the merchant can redeem the coin at the mint. One issue in this protocol is that the customer may use a worthless coin by offering a coin that has already been spent. This kind of fraud would only be detected if the customer actually lost the coin flip, and at this point the merchant might not be able to recover from the loss. A fradulent anonymous customer may run the protocol using already spent coins until the coin flip is in his favor. As with incremental spending, lock permissions could be used to ensure that the customer cannot defraud the merchant by offering a coin that has already been spent. However, as this means involving the mint even if the merchant looses the coin flip, such a scheme is unsuitable for microdonations as the transaction costs from involving the mint might be disproportionate to the value of the transaction, and thus with locking the probabilistic scheme has no advantage over simply using fractional payments. Hence, Taler uses probabilistic transactions {\em without} online double-spending detection. This enables the customer to defraud the merchant by paying with a coin that was already spent. However, as, by definition, such microdonations are for tiny amounts, the incentive for customers to pursue this kind of fraud is limited. Still, to clarify that the customer must be honest, we prefer the term micro{\em donations} over micro{\em payments} for this scheme. The following steps are executed for microdonations with upgrade probability $p$: \begin{enumerate} \item The merchant sends an offer to the customer. \item The customer sends a commitment $H(r_c)$ to a random value $r_c \in [0,2^R)$, where $R$ is a system parameter. \item The merchant sends random $r_m \in [0,2^R)$ to the customer. \item The customer computes $p' := (|r_c - r_m|) / (2^R)$. If $p' < p$, the customer sends a coin with deposit-permission to the merchant. Otherwise, the customer sends $r_c$ to the merchant. \item The merchant deposits the coin, or checks if $r_c$ is consistent with $H(r_c)$. \end{enumerate} Evidently the customer can ``cheat'' by aborting the transaction in Step 3 of the microdonation protocol if the outcome is unfavourable --- and repeat until he wins. This is why Taler is suitable for microdonations --- where the customer voluntarily contributes --- and not for micropayments. Naturally, if the donations requested are small, the incentive to cheat for minimal gain should be quite low. Payment software could embrace this fact by providing an appeal to conscience in form of an option labeled ``I am unethical and want to cheat'', which executes the dishonest version of the payment protocol. If an organization detects that it cannot support itself with microdonations, it can always choose to switch to the macropayment system with slightly higher transaction costs to remain in business. \end{document}