Zero-Knowledge Ring-Signature for Enhanced Anonymous Transactions in Blockchain Networks

Abstract

Blockchain technology offers a decentralized ledger where all transactions are transparently recorded. While this transparency facilitates trustless verification, it also raises critical privacy concerns: large-scale data collection and analytics can link and trace user addresses, undermining the pseudonymity once considered sufficient. In this paper, we propose ZK-R-SNARK, a novel scheme that integrates Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK-SNARKs) with Ring Signatures to enhance transactional anonymity in public blockchain networks. Our approach utilizes ring signatures to ensure that the originating signer remains indistinguishable among a group of potential signers, while ZK-SNARK ensures succinct and non-interactive verification of the signature’s correctness. By combining these techniques, ZK-R-SNARK enables nodes to validate the authenticity of transactions without revealing any critical information about the sender’s identity or transaction details. As a result, even advanced data analytics or machine learning techniques have limited capability to cluster or link addresses over time. We implement our scheme in the Circom framework to demonstrate its feasibility and measure performance metrics such as proof generation time, verification overhead, and on-chain data size. Experimental results indicate that ZK-R-SNARK achieves robust privacy guarantees with acceptable computational costs for practical blockchain environments.