PrivateEx: Privacy preserving exchange of crypto-assets on blockchain

Bitcoin introduces a new type of cryptocurrency that does not rely on a central system to maintain transactions. Inspired by the success of Bitcoin, all types of alt cryptocurrencies were invented in recent years. Some of the new cryptocurrencies focus on privacy enhancement, where transaction information such as value and sender/receiver identity can be hidden, such as Zcash and Monero. However, there are few schemes to support multiple types of cryptocurrencies/assets and offer privacy enhancement at the same time. The major challenge for a multiple asset system is that it needs to support two-way assets exchange between participants besides one-way asset transfer. Thus, we propose a privacy-preserving exchange scheme, PrivateEx, which preserves the privacy of the exchange of different assets. PrivateEx utilizes zero-knowledge proof and a novel way to "lock" assets involved in the exchange to guarantee the correctness, fairness, and privacy of exchange of assets in the system. We also implement a prototype of PrivateEx and evaluate its performance to show that it is practical with modern computers.