When i churn/mix multiple account's XMR and then combine the outputs into a single account, i have compromised my anonymization effort? (lemmings.world)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by hetzlemmingsworld@lemmings.world to c/monero@monero.town

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Hello,

if I am using several Monero receiving accounts (like “cash”, “work”, “trading”, “mining”, “donations”) and for each of the account i have secondary account into which i repeatedly sweep my receiving account's balance in order to churn/mix my XMR (e.g. cash -> cash2nd).

What if:

A) I "combine" the XMR again in the second "level" of my XMR accounts (account called common3rd):

cash     -> cash2nd    -> common3rd
work     -> work2nd    -> common3rd
trading  -> trading2nd -> common3rd -> 3rd party (big payment which would combine most/all outputs)

B) I split each churning/mixing transaction into several a small outputs:

cash -> output 1 - cash2nd
     -> output 2 - work2nd
     -> output 3 - trading2nd
and then spend from all these 2nd accounts in one big transaction

Is better (anonymity-wise) A or B and why or you suggest better direction?

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[-] mister_monster@monero.town 7 points 5 months ago

Dude, the point of Monero is that you don't need to do any of this. Youre over thinking it. Just generate subaddresses and be happy.

[-] delirious_owl@discuss.online 1 points 5 months ago

If you change chains then you do have to worry

[-] azalty@jlai.lu -1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

False and false

Using CEX and sending multiple transactions to the same person will make it really easy to trace you. You just need to have an opponent that is willing to do it and has what’s needed (your government for example)

[-] mister_monster@monero.town 2 points 5 months ago

Using a CEX means telling them who you are. No way around that.

If you use subaddresses you don't have to worry about traceability after withdrawal.

[-] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You’ll have to explain me how 15 decoys are enough to make you untraceable, there is still roughly a 1 in 16 chance that a transaction your output is the real spend in a transaction where it is included.

Imagine you are A, and B and C are two different third parties

If B -> A -> C, then all good

But if B -> A -> B, then there is a 1 in 16 chance (in the best scenario for you) that in B's eyes, you were the real spend. Add to that the fact that most people don’t churn and B doesn’t have many customers, and it becomes a lot more likely that you were the real spend (I'd bet my money on it).

CEX or not, you’re still traceable

[-] Giffbro@monero.town 1 points 5 months ago

Do a sweep and see if it gets caught by the sweep detector they have built into one of those monero block explorers. Experiment with what those tools can detect. If I had a reason to be anonymous I would make sure I worked to understand how those free sweep detect tools work that charitable monero peeps have offered up to the public.

[-] azalty@jlai.lu 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The more outputs you have/use, to more traceable you get. The more churning you do, the less traceable you become

I would advise to mix your outputs at different moments rather than all at once in a final big transaction, as those kind of transactions really stand out. If you’ve made enough churning it shouldn’t be a concern anyways but 🤷

On the other hand, mixing outputs early will also make you more traceable (but will lower the cost of churning, as churning many times many individual outputs is expensive), so I’m not sure it’s the best option either

[-] hetzlemmingsworld@lemmings.world 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The more outputs you have/use, to more traceable you get

Thanks for your input. ChatGPT says "using more outputs in your transactions can potentially lead to unintentional traceability if those outputs are later used in a larger transaction. This is why it is important to carefully plan and manage how you use outputs in your transactions to maximize privacy." So it confirms what you have said.

So I guess that I should avoid manually adding multiple outputs in aim to decrease chance of a tracking, I am saying that since i am usually getting small transactions and spending in big ones (which would "consolidate" small outputs and more less invalidate my anonymization effort). So I guess i will do just churning with single output to my secondary wallet and in case i want to "join" funds from "home" and "work" accounts, I can do:

3rd party -> work -> work2nd

KYC'ed 3rd party -> home -> home2nd -> home3rd -> work2nd

and then spend big transaction from work2nd (or maybe i can skip the step "home3rd -> work2nd" and source the big transaction from various accounts, yet someone claimed last year "It seems that at the present moment, neither the Monero GUI/RPC/CLI wallets implement the ability to transfer from multiple addresses." and I can confirm I am unable to find it in Monero GUI [btw. it is very slow to sync (even tens of minutes if not ran for 2 weeks+), i am NOT running node and i am using Tor proxy inside it]. Feedback to what I have written is much appreciated.

[-] azalty@jlai.lu 1 points 5 months ago

Seems good!

About the Monero software, try using Feather Wallet. It gives you more infos about your outputs (you can select each one individually), handles everything better, and usually syncs faster (with remote nodes). I advise using Tor nodes (Tor support built-in) or using a VPN

Use a trusted remote node, as they’re currently pretty much able to track which outputs are used as decoys, as your client asks for them

Locally syncing by downloading the blockchain is still the best way as you will leak less things, but is super slow. Pick your poison (or run your own remote node!)

[-] jeffro256@monero.town 0 points 5 months ago

Both are bad for privacy, but B is especially horrendous. Every time you consolidate transaction outputs like this, you are yelling at the people you received money from: "HELLO! REMEMBER WHEN YOU SENT ME MONEY? I AM CONSOLIDATING THAT IN THIS TRANSACTION RIGHT NOW". When that transaction is the SAME transaction to actually spend those funds to someone else (AKA scenario B), you lose almost all plausible deniability about the origin of the funds. For the love of everything holy, PLEASE do not "churn" like this. I don't mean to sound harsh, but since you do not know anything about coin control yet, I would recommend staying away from churning and consolidations at the moment. The most private way to send money to someone is NOT to consolidate ever. Sweep each output to them individually, one at a time, in separate transactions over multiple hours with random timings. However, if you insist on consolidating everything into one output before sending it to them, there's a couple rules to live by: A) NEVER consolidate outputs AND spend them in the same transaction (i.e. only ever consolidate to an output address that you own), B) never consolidate more than 2 outputs at a time, C) use random delays when churning, D) if you are trying to keep different receiver identities (subaddresses) unlinked from one another, don't consolidate outputs from those different identities in the same transaction E) once everything is in one output, do at least one extra 1-input tx churn to yourself before spending (after a random delay of course).

[-] hetzlemmingsworld@lemmings.world 1 points 5 months ago

I will need to consolidate/sweep hundreds of transactions maybe once per year and pay it to someone in one big transaction. This big transaction is mandatory, i can not pay them in small amounts. The plan on how to proceed is already mentioned below when you search for "C)" on this page. Please if it is wrong or if you have an improvement idea (anonymity-wise), comment on that below. Thank you