zips/zip-0315.rst

::

  ZIP: 315
  Title: Best Practices for Wallet Handling of Multiple Pools
  Owners: Daira Emma Hopwood <daira@electriccoin.co>
          Jack Grigg <jack@electriccoin.co>
  Status: Proposed
  Category: Wallet
  Discussions-To: <https://github.com/zcash/zips/issues/447>
  Pull-Request: <https://github.com/zcash/zips/issues/>


Terminology
===========

The key words "MUST", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", and "MAY" in this document are to be
interpreted as described in RFC 2119. [#RFC2119]_

The terms below are to be interpreted as follows:

Auto-shielding
    The process of automatically transferring transparent funds to the most recent
    shielded pool on receipt.

Auto-migration
    The process of automatically transferring shielded funds from older pools to the
    most preferred (usually the most recent) pool on receipt.

TODO: add definitions of opportunistic shielding and migration.

TODO: "confirmed", "partially confirmed"


Motivation
==========

The aim of this ZIP is to provide wallet developers with a set of best practices by
which they can minimize the leakage of information when constructing transactions.

This includes best practices for:

* how to handle interactions between the ZIP 32 key tree and Unified Addresses;
* when to use external or internal keys/addresses;
* sharing addresses and viewing keys;
* sending and receiving funds;
* migrating funds between pools.


Requirements
============

User consent
------------

The guiding principle of these requirements is that users must explicitly consent
to each instance of information being revealed by the wallet.

As is true for consent in general, a user may give blanket consent to reveal a
particular kind of information, and must always be able to revoke consent to
reveal such information in the future. The specifications below describe some
situations in which blanket consent may be inappropriate.


Long-term storage of funds
--------------------------

It is RECOMMENDED that wallets only hold funds as shielded in the long-term;
that is, they automatically shield incoming transparent funds.

The remainder of this specification assumes a wallet that follows this
recommendation, except where explicitly noted.


Trusted and untrusted notes
---------------------------

Wallets need to take account of two concerns:

* enabling funds to be spent as quickly as possible to reduce latency;
* waiting for long enough before spending notes to ensure that the spendable
  balance is not overestimated, and so can be trusted by the user.

To enable this we define two kinds of notes:

* An untrusted note is a note received from a party that may try to double-spend.
* A trusted note is a note received from a party where the wallet trusts a
  double-spend not to occur, e.g. notes created by the wallet's internal note
  handling.

Wallets can then require that untrusted notes need more confirmations before
they become spendable than trusted notes. This provides an improved trade-off
between latency on the one hand, and reliability and safety on the other.

Wallets MAY enable users to mark specific external transactions as trusted,
allowing their received notes to be spent more quickly.

A wallet SHOULD have a policy that is clearly communicated to the user for
the number of confirmations needed to spend untrusted and trusted notes
respectively. The following confirmation policy is RECOMMENDED:

* 10 confirmations, for untrusted notes;
* 3 confirmations, for trusted notes.

A note is *confirmed spendable* if and only if the wallet has its spending
key, and:

* it is a trusted note that has at least the required confirmations for trusted
  notes; or
* it is an untrusted note that has at least the required confirmations for
  untrusted notes.

A note is *unconfirmed spendable* if and only if the wallet has its spending
key, and it is not confirmed spendable.

A note is *watch-only* if and only if the wallet has its full viewing key
but not its spending key.


Reporting of balances
---------------------

Wallets SHOULD report:

* Spendable balance.
* Pending funds, *or* total (spendable + pending) balance.

These are calculated as follows:

* The spendable balance is the sum of values of confirmed spendable notes.
* The pending ...

Incoming transactions (each with # confirmations, amount)

Sent transactions (each with # confirmations, how long until expiry, amount)


If they use auto-shielding, then any transparent balance should be treated as
pending.

For wallets that allow long-term storage of transparent funds, they SHOULD also
show spendable transparent and pending (or total) transparent according to the
same policy.

Unedited
--------

Wallets MUST report at least separate shielded and transparent balance.

If auto-shielding or auto-migration is off, then wallets MAY report separate
balances for each shielded pool and for transparent balance.

If the wallet never supports a given pool, it can obviously omit balances for that
pool.

If auto-shielding is on, transparent funds should be reported in "balance unavailable
to spend".

Wallets SHOULD separately report the balances of funds that are immediately
spendable, and any remaining funds that are expected from unconfirmed or
partially confirmed transfers.

TODO: make this more precise in terms of the following categories:

* Funds at rest (not involved in any not-fully-confirmed transfer)
* Outgoing funds to an external source (might come back if the tx doesn't go through)
* Incoming funds from an external source
* Funds we are sending to ourself.




Rationale
'''''''''

The specification of balance reporting is intended to give the user visibility
into the operation of auto-shielding, opportunistic shielding, and pool migration/usage.



Linkability of transactions or addresses
----------------------------------------



Network-layer privacy
---------------------


Viewing keys
------------

What they are supposed to reveal; see ZIP 310 for Sapling (needs updating for
Orchard). https://github.com/zcash/zips/issues/606



Allowed transfers
-----------------

* Sprout -> transparent or Sapling
* Sapling -> transparent or Sapling or Orchard
* Orchard -> transparent or Sapling or Orchard
* if auto-shielding is off:
  *  transparent -> transparent or Sapling or Orchard
* if auto-shielding is on:
  *  transparent -> internal Orchard or Sapling

Note: wallets MAY further restrict the set of transfers they perform.


Auto-shielding
--------------

Wallets SHOULD NOT spend funds from a transparent address to an external address,
unless the user gives explicit consent for this on a per-transaction basis.

In order to support this policy, wallets SHOULD implement a system of auto-shielding
with the following characteristics.


If auto-shielding functionality is available in a wallet, then users MUST be able
to explicitly consent to one of the following possibilities:

* auto-shielding is always on;
* auto-shielding is always off;
* the user specifies a policy...

Auto-shielding MUST be one of:

* "must opt in or out" (zcashd will do this -- i.e. refuse to start unless the option
  is configured), or
* always on.


Auto-migration
--------------


Information leakage for transfers between pools
-----------------------------------------------


If no auto-migration, if you can satisfy a transfer request to Sapling from your
Sapling funds, do so.

The user's consent is needed to reveal amounts. Therefore, there should be
per-transaction opt-in for any amount-revealing transfer.

* there may be a compatibility issue for amount-revealing cross-pool txns that were
  previously allowed without opt-in

Don't automatically combine funds across pools to satisfy a transfer (since that
could reveal the total funds in some pool).

In order to maintain the integrity of IVK guarantees, wallets should not generate
unified addresses that contain internal receivers, nor expose internal receivers
(such as those used for auto-shielding and change outputs) in any way.

Open questions:

* should there be an auto-migration option from Sapling to Orchard?

# str4d notes

If we want to have both automatic and opportunistic shielding, and keep the two
indistinguishable, then we can't auto-shield when the transparent balance reaches
some threshold (otherwise opportunistic would either never be used, or would be
identifiable when it uses the balance below the threshold).

Instead, a proposition: we define a distribution of "time since last payment to the
address" from which we sample the time at which the auto-shielding transaction will
be created. This distribution is weighted by the balance in the address, so as more
funds accrue, the auto-shielding transaction is more likely to be created.

- It ensures that all funds will eventually be auto-shielded, while preventing
  fee-dusting attacks (where dust is sent in order to repeatedly consume fees from
  the wallet), as the auto-shielding transaction is not directly triggered by payment
  receipt.

- If the user makes a shielding transaction in the meantime, we opportunistically
  shield, without it being clearly not an auto-shielding transaction.

- If a wallet is offline for a long time, then it would likely auto-shield as soon as
  it finishes syncing. This maybe isn't enough to reveal that the wallet came online,
  except that it _might_ result in auto-shielding transactions for multiple
  transparent addresses being created at the same time. So we might want to
  special-case this?

Properties we want from auto-shielding:

- Auto-shielding transactions MUST NOT shield from multiple transparent receivers in
  the same transaction.
  - Doing so would trivially link diversified UAs containing transparent receivers.

Properties we want from auto-migration:

- Receipt of a shielded payment MUST NOT trigger any on-chain behaviour (as that
  reveals transaction linkability).

Both auto-shielding and auto-migration are time-triggered actions, not
receipt-triggered actions. An auto-shielding or auto-migration transaction MUST NOT
be created as a direct result of a payment being received.

Both of these are opportunistic: if the user's wallet is making a transaction in
which one of these actions would occur anyway, then the wallet takes the opportunity
to migrate as much as it would do if it were generating an autoshielding transaction.
This both saves on a transaction, and removes the need for any kind of transparent
change address within UAs.

TODO: what pool should change go to?

* Proposal: the most recent pool already involved in the transaction.


References
==========

.. [#RFC2119] `RFC 2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119.html>`_