Abstract


Despite the growth of the Internet and the increasing concern for
privacy of online communications, current deployments of
anonymization networks depends on a very small set of nodes that
volunteer their bandwidth. We believe that the main reason is not
disbelief in their ability to protect anonymity, but rather the
practical limitations in bandwidth and latency that stem from limited
participation. This limited participation, in turn, is due to a lack
of incentives. We propose providing economic incentives, which
historically have worked very well.
                                                                                
In this talk, we present a payment scheme that can be used to
compensate nodes which provide anonymity in Tor, an existing onion
routing, anonymizing network. We show that current anonymous payment
schemes are not suitable and introduce a hybrid payment system based
on a combination of the Peppercoin Micropayment system and a new type
of ``one use'' electronic cash. Our system claims to maintain users'
anonymity, although payment techniques mentioned previously, when
adopted individually,provably fail.