Argumentation Schemes for Blockchain Deanonymization
This work addresses the need for clearer legal reasoning in blockchain forensics to protect rights, but it is incremental as it adapts existing argumentation theory to a specific domain.
The paper tackles the problem of implicit premises in cryptocurrency deanonymization techniques used by law enforcement, which complicates investigations and risks rights violations, by proposing specialized argumentation schemes to make these premises transparent and evaluate probative value, demonstrating applicability in a real-world case.
Cryptocurrency forensics became standard tools for law enforcement. Their basic idea is to deanonymise cryptocurrency transactions to identify the people behind them. Cryptocurrency deanonymisation techniques are often based on premises that largely remain implicit, especially in legal practice. On the one hand, this implicitness complicates investigations. On the other hand, it can have far-reaching consequences for the rights of those affected. Argumentation schemes could remedy this untenable situation by rendering underlying premises transparent. Additionally, they can aid in critically evaluating the probative value of any results obtained by cryptocurrency deanonymisation techniques. In the argumentation theory and AI community, argumentation schemes are influential as they state implicit premises for different types of arguments. Through their critical questions, they aid the argumentation participants in critically evaluating arguments. We specialise the notion of argumentation schemes to legal reasoning about cryptocurrency deanonymisation. Furthermore, we demonstrate the applicability of the resulting schemes through an exemplary real-world case. Ultimately, we envision that using our schemes in legal practice can solidify the evidential value of blockchain investigations as well as uncover and help address uncertainty in underlying premises - thus contributing to protect the rights of those affected by cryptocurrency forensics.