Briefing
A foundational challenge in public blockchain infrastructure is exposed by a novel deanonymization attack that exploits the temporal relationship between on-chain transaction confirmation and the user’s subsequent off-chain status query. The research establishes that a passive network adversary, monitoring traffic at critical internet exchange points, can precisely link a user’s IP address to their blockchain pseudonym by correlating the transaction’s public ledger timestamp with the exact time of the user’s Remote Procedure Call (RPC) query for that transaction’s status. This breakthrough mechanism, which requires zero transaction fee to execute and demonstrates a success rate exceeding 95% against normal users, fundamentally undermines the assumption of network-level anonymity for users interacting with public chains via standard RPC services, demanding immediate architectural re-evaluation of all public network access points.
Context
The prevailing model of blockchain interaction assumes a strong separation between the user’s network identity (IP address) and their on-chain identity (pseudonymous wallet address). While cryptographic techniques like zero-knowledge proofs address on-chain data privacy, the network layer has relied on the implicit security of standard internet protocols and the sheer volume of network traffic for user anonymity. The established theoretical limitation centered on costly or active attacks requiring transaction fees or sophisticated network manipulation to achieve deanonymization. This left the passive, non-transactional interaction → specifically, the post-submission query for transaction status via RPC endpoints → as an insufficiently examined attack vector, creating a foundational vulnerability in the user-facing layer of decentralized infrastructure.
Analysis
The paper introduces a new passive attack primitive that exploits the precise timing of information flow between the public ledger and the user. The core mechanism is the temporal correlation between two distinct events → the moment a transaction is confirmed and recorded on the public blockchain, and the moment a user queries the RPC service to retrieve the confirmation receipt. A strong passive adversary monitors network traffic at a strategic vantage point, capturing the IP address and the precise TCP packet timestamp of the RPC query. The adversary then cross-references this data with the public ledger’s record of the transaction’s confirmation time.
The extremely tight temporal window between the transaction’s finality and the user’s immediate, predictable status check query creates a unique, high-fidelity temporal fingerprint. This logic is effective because users, upon submitting a transaction, predictably query its status until confirmation is received, making the latency between on-chain finality and the first status check a near-deterministic link to the originating IP.
Parameters
- Deanonymization Success Rate → Over 95% – The rate at which the attack successfully links an IP address to a blockchain pseudonym against normal RPC users on various networks.
- Adversary Transaction Cost → Zero transaction fee – The attack is entirely passive, requiring only network monitoring access and no on-chain interaction or expenditure.
- Vulnerable Networks Tested → Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana – Demonstrating the vulnerability’s generality across different consensus mechanisms and network architectures.
Outlook
This research mandates a strategic shift toward network-layer privacy primitives, moving beyond a sole focus on on-chain cryptography. The immediate next step involves the widespread adoption of privacy-preserving network relays and decentralized RPC infrastructure to decouple the user’s query time from their IP address. In the 3-5 year horizon, this work will likely spur the development of new communication protocols that incorporate mandatory, cryptographically-enforced temporal obfuscation for all transaction-related queries. Furthermore, it opens a new avenue of academic research into the formal security analysis of the entire blockchain communication stack, from the user’s device to the final block proposal, prioritizing network-layer resilience against passive timing attacks.
