{"paper":{"title":"Extending Blockchain Untraceability with Plausible Deniability","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"Blockchain transfers can be hidden by staging them to look like ordinary DeFi losses from sandwich attacks or arbitrage.","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.CR","authors_text":"Eunchan Park, Kyonghwa Song, Min Suk Kang, Won Hoi Kim, Wonho Song","submitted_at":"2026-05-13T08:02:15Z","abstract_excerpt":"Traditional blockchain untraceability schemes, such as mixers and privacy coins, obscure the sender-receiver relationship by placing transfers within an anonymity set. This paper studies a stronger goal: whether the transfer event itself can be made unobservable by blending into common decentralized-finance (DeFi) activity. We introduce Deniable Covert Asset Transfer (DCAT), a class of transfers that stage common loss-producing events, such as sandwich and arbitrage operations, so that a sender appears to suffer an ordinary loss while the receiver appears to profit from it. We design and valid"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"DCAT transfers are syntactically identical to corresponding MEV activities, classified as ordinary extractions by standard MEV detection tools, and leave the sender and receiver unlinked under representative forensic tools.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"That the staged DCAT events remain indistinguishable from genuine MEV activity under real-world economic semantics and that power-law distributions in MEV losses are stable enough to prevent reliable fixed-threshold detection.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"DCAT hides asset transfers by making them appear as typical MEV losses like sandwiches and arbitrages, rendering them syntactically identical to normal DeFi activity and providing plausible deniability.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"Blockchain transfers can be hidden by staging them to look like ordinary DeFi losses from sandwich attacks or arbitrage.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"c27bb2065c1ab644928741ae2f6f002bdd8c7ab2584d129a22261a9c52e121d1"},"source":{"id":"2605.13132","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":"a4d8d2bb-59d7-4623-b900-01ffcd4905c0","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-14T18:49:27.930355Z","strongest_claim":"DCAT transfers are syntactically identical to corresponding MEV activities, classified as ordinary extractions by standard MEV detection tools, and leave the sender and receiver unlinked under representative forensic tools.","one_line_summary":"DCAT hides asset transfers by making them appear as typical MEV losses like sandwiches and arbitrages, rendering them syntactically identical to normal DeFi activity and providing plausible deniability.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"That the staged DCAT events remain indistinguishable from genuine MEV activity under real-world economic semantics and that power-law distributions in MEV losses are stable enough to prevent reliable fixed-threshold detection.","pith_extraction_headline":"Blockchain transfers can be hidden by staging them to look like ordinary DeFi losses from sandwich attacks or arbitrage."},"references":{"count":62,"sample":[{"doi":"","year":2021,"title":"Coinjoin in the wild: An empirical analysis in dash,","work_id":"bb904e43-e13b-495f-99ec-4f20bc417ae1","ref_index":1,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2019,"title":"Tornado cash privacy solution version 1.4,","work_id":"6eb135d7-f813-4954-8099-594d18d1d530","ref_index":2,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2014,"title":"Mixcoin: Anonymity for bitcoin with accountable mixes,","work_id":"bde2d450-c9b0-46c2-affa-6cdc2c6bb124","ref_index":3,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2015,"title":"Blindcoin: Blinded, accountable mixes for bitcoin,","work_id":"31d2cba0-cec8-4dd3-b372-f31241961593","ref_index":4,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2014,"title":"Coinshuffle: Practical decentralized coin mixing for bitcoin,","work_id":"546b17cc-5ae9-403b-8960-c1386ba3b51a","ref_index":5,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false}],"resolved_work":62,"snapshot_sha256":"71def4f5b6db1dde20361d3614410852886933ed7ca2aa90c0fd2e815831e657","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":2,"snapshot_sha256":"fb77ac1fbb3fc1e8cacf1d191a2f85690220ee505bb96b9442e4809f9f9c1d45"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}