Dust refers to the amounts of cryptocurrency that are smaller than the fees required to spend them in a transaction. Due to its “economically irrational” nature, dust is often used to achieve some external side effect, rather than exchanging value. In this paper we study this phenomenon by conducting an analysis of dust creation and consumption in the Bitcoin blockchain. We do so by exploiting a new method that allows resource-constrained nodes to retrieve blockchain data by sending authenticated queries to possibly untrusted but more powerful nodes. We validate the method effectiveness experimentally and then analyze the collected data. Results show that a large amount of dust can be traced back to on-chain betting services.
An analysis of Bitcoin dust through authenticated queries
Matteo Loporchio
;Anna Bernasconi;Damiano Di Francesco Maesa;Laura Ricci
2022-01-01
Abstract
Dust refers to the amounts of cryptocurrency that are smaller than the fees required to spend them in a transaction. Due to its “economically irrational” nature, dust is often used to achieve some external side effect, rather than exchanging value. In this paper we study this phenomenon by conducting an analysis of dust creation and consumption in the Bitcoin blockchain. We do so by exploiting a new method that allows resource-constrained nodes to retrieve blockchain data by sending authenticated queries to possibly untrusted but more powerful nodes. We validate the method effectiveness experimentally and then analyze the collected data. Results show that a large amount of dust can be traced back to on-chain betting services.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
