Blockchain technology has emerged as a transformative force in various sectors, including finance, healthcare, supply chains, and intellectual property management. Beyond Bitcoin’s role as a decentralized payment system, Ethereum represents a notable application of blockchain, featuring Smart Contract functionality that enables the development and execution of decentralized applications (DApps). A key feature of Ethereum, and public blockchains in general, is pseudonymity, typically achieved by using public keys as pseudonyms for users. Despite implementing several privacy-preserving techniques, the public recording of user activities on the blockchain allows various deanonymization methods that can profile users, reveal sensitive information, and potentially re-identify them. Most blockchains, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Cardano, employ the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model for accounting, which focuses on individual transactions and is susceptible to various deanonymization techniques. In contrast, Ethereum uses an account-based transaction model, integrating the concepts of accounts and wallets at the protocol level. This makes most UTXO-based deanonymization techniques ineffective for Ethereum. However, alternative methods with the potential to deanonymize Ethereum users have been proposed and developed. Privacy preservation techniques have been used to counteract deanonymization attempts; however, the challenges related to these techniques, their effectiveness and efficiency, and the trade-off between usability and protection levels remain areas for further exploration. This survey presents a comprehensive analysis of state-of-the-art privacy preservation along with deanonymization techniques in the blockchain and Ethereum ecosystems. This survey examines the intrinsic mechanisms supporting pseudonymity in Ethereum, providing a detailed assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of privacy preservation techniques, and suggests potential countermeasures against those deanonymization methods. It also discusses the implications arising from the intersection of DApps and data protection legislation, which is vital for ensuring the coexistence and advancement of groundbreaking blockchain capabilities and protecting user data.

中文翻译：

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以太坊假名调查：技术、挑战和未来方向


区块链技术已成为各个领域的变革力量，包括金融、医疗保健、供应链和知识产权管理。除了比特币作为去中心化支付系统的作用之外，以太坊还代表了区块链的一个显着应用，它具有智能合约功能，可以开发和执行去中心化应用程序 （DApp）。以太坊和一般公共区块链的一个关键功能是假名，通常是通过使用公钥作为用户的假名来实现的。尽管实施了多种隐私保护技术，但在区块链上公开记录用户活动允许使用各种去匿名化方法，这些方法可以分析用户、揭示敏感信息并可能重新识别他们。大多数区块链，如比特币、莱特币和卡尔达诺，都采用未花费的交易输出 （UTXO） 模型进行会计，该模型专注于单个交易，容易受到各种去匿名化技术的影响。相比之下，以太坊使用基于账户的交易模型，在协议层面整合了账户和钱包的概念。这使得大多数基于 UTXO 的去匿名化技术对以太坊无效。然而，已经提出并开发了有可能对以太坊用户进行去匿名化的替代方法。隐私保护技术已被用于抵消去匿名化尝试;然而，与这些技术相关的挑战、它们的有效性和效率以及可用性和保护级别之间的权衡仍然是需要进一步探索的领域。该调查对区块链和以太坊生态系统中最先进的隐私保护以及去匿名化技术进行了全面分析。 这项调查研究了以太坊中支持假名化的内在机制，详细评估了隐私保护技术的优缺点，并提出了针对这些去匿名化方法的潜在对策。它还讨论了 DApp 和数据保护立法交叉产生的影响，这对于确保突破性区块链功能的共存和发展以及保护用户数据至关重要。