Ethereum transaction graph analysis

Abstract

Cryptocurrency platforms such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have become more popular due to decentralized control and the promise of anonymity. Ethereum is particularly powerful due to its support for smart contracts which are implemented through Turing complete scripting languages and digital tokens that represent fungible tradable goods. It is necessary to understand whether de-anonymization is feasible to quantify the promise of anonymity. Cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used in online black markets like Silk Road and ransomware like CryptoLocker and WannaCry. In this paper, we propose a model for persisting transactions from Ethereum into a graph database, Neo4j. We propose leveraging graph compute or analytics against the transactions persisted into a graph database.