The core ILP was designed primarily for efficiency and applicability across different use cases. Features focused on privacy were intentionally left for the layers above and below ILP. This post outlines what is and isn’t visible from ILP packets today and three options for hiding more of the details of a transaction using higher- and lower-level technologies.
What doesn’t an ILP packet show?
- Interledger is not a blockchain, so transactions are not globally visible. ILP packets are only visible to the participants in the specific path the packet takes.
- Source address (ILP address of the sender). Unlike internet routers, ILP connectors remember which peer each packet came from so they can send it back along the same path without knowing the address of the sender
- Connectors do not know the full path a payment will take or has taken
- End-to-end data is encrypted by most, if not all, transport protocols
- If many applications use the same transport protocol, it would not be obvious which higher-level application packets correspond to
- Identity information such as names
What is visible from ILP packets?
- Each connector knows the party that directly sent it the packet and the destination ILP address. This means that the first connector knows the sender and receiver, but other connectors do not know who the original sender is
- Destination ILP address, which may reveal information about the receiver including what transport protocol or implementation is being used depending on what they put in the address (ILP addresses can contain arbitrary strings of characters)
- Packet amount, which could reveal some information about the hops a packet has gone through if sender implementations send predictable amounts (like starting with 100 units) and exchange rates between different assets are known
- Expiry, which reveals the number of hops the packet has traversed so far if senders always use a 30 second timeout and each connector reduces it by a predictable amount like 1 second
- Size of data being sent, which may be reveal some of what the packet is for even if the data is encrypted by the transport protocol
- Frequency of packets sent to the same ILP address, which may reveal which software implementation is sending the packets
- Error messages the receiver responds with when pinged
- Timing information of traffic sent over the Internet could enable an entity with network-level observation capabilities (e.g. NSA) to see who is paying who, even without viewing any of the ILP-specific data (which is sent in encrypted internet packets)
Privacy-Enhancing Technologies
Onion routing
While this was intentionally not built into the core protocol, it would be possible to build a TOR-like system on top of ILP. Onion routing protocols obscure details such as the end recipient’s address by bouncing traffic around among circuits of participating nodes.
VPN
Arguably, an Interledger “VPN” (virtual private network) would provide significantly more privacy than a traditional internet one.
On the internet, VPNs are single hops that a user will send all of their traffic to in order to secure or hide the traffic from untrusted intermediaries like wifi hotspots or snooping Internet Service Providers (ISPs). However, traditional VPNs can correlate all incoming traffic with the specific user that sent it, both because IP packets contain the source address and because traffic must be linked to the user’s payment information.
An Interledger VPN might provide a comparable level of privacy as a multi-hop onion routed network on the internet. First, ILP packets do not contain the source address, so the ILP VPN provider would know which connector they got the packet from but not the address of the actual sender. Second, ILP packets contain value, so there is no need for the VPN provider to link all traffic to a subscription account. Arguably, multi-hop onion routing networks are mainly needed to break the link between the source and destination addresses, but a single hop may provide as good privacy if there is already no link between the source and destination address. (I would love for someone to dig into this hypothesis and see if there’s anything to it)
Private Layer 2
A private layer 2 payment protocol coupled with a private communications layer like TOR might also provide sufficient privacy for ILP payments. The private layer 2 protocol could be a multi-hop network like Bitcoin’s Lightning Network or it might be even simpler with a single-hop solution like what BoltLabs is developing for Zcash.
This approach should allow the sender to send ILP packets and settle balances with the first connector, without that connector knowing who the packets are from. I think it would also be possible to receive ILP packets and settlements through such an arrangement as well.
Getting Involved
It would be great to have researchers look into some of these topics to figure out benefits and trade-offs of each approach. If you’re interested, feel free to post ideas here or message me directly.