PrivGas
Privacy-preserving gas sponsorship for stealth addresses
M M Imran, Anik Tahabilder, Changxin Bai, Qiang Zhu, Shiyong Lu
IEEE 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Internet of Things (AIBThings), 2026. Accepted. Presented at the conference.
Problem
A fresh stealth address can receive assets but lacks the ETH needed to spend them. Funding gas from a known wallet can reconnect the stealth address to its recipient. Sponsorship also needs an admission policy that limits credit farming.
Approach
PrivGas separates Fund, Bootstrap, and Spend. A non-refundable fee gates admission, a shielded credit pool stores commitments, and a Groth16 membership proof with a domain-separated nullifier authorizes redemption under ERC-4337.
Research contribution
PrivGas pays a stealth address's gas without revealing which deposited credit is being spent, and it sets the admission fee high enough that farming sponsored credits does not pay off.
Authorship
First author, with Anik Tahabilder, Changxin Bai, Qiang Zhu, and Shiyong Lu.
Evaluation evidence
The paper reports a peak Spend validation cost of 284,527 gas in local Foundry simulation, with 225,733 gas for isolated Groth16 verification. Its artifact documents 65 passing tests, including Bootstrap and Spend integration through EntryPoint.handleOps with genuine proof fixtures.
Scope & limitations
These are local simulation measurements, not testnet or mainnet results. UserOperation.sender remains public. Timing correlation, a small or cold-start anonymity set, and acceptance of only the latest Merkle root limit privacy and usability. Full bundler-level opcode tracing remains future work; the prototype is not an audited production deployment.
Reproduction
The repository README maps paper claims to tests. Run forge test for the suite and forge test --gas-report for gas measurements after installing Foundry. Consult GAS_REPORT.md and PAPER_SUPPLEMENT.md for measurement scope and artifact limitations.
Citation
M M Imran, Anik Tahabilder, Changxin Bai, Qiang Zhu, Shiyong Lu. “PrivGas: A Privacy-Preserving Gas Sponsorship Protocol for Blockchain Stealth Addresses.” IEEE 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Internet of Things (AIBThings), 2026. Accepted.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{privgasstealthaddressgassponsorship2026,
title = {PrivGas: A Privacy-Preserving Gas Sponsorship Protocol for Blockchain Stealth Addresses},
author = {M M Imran and Anik Tahabilder and Changxin Bai and Qiang Zhu and Shiyong Lu},
booktitle = {IEEE 4th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Internet of Things (AIBThings)},
year = {2026},
note = {Accepted},
}Contact
If you'd like to talk about a research collaboration, a faculty position, or an industry research role in blockchain security, email me.
mmimran@wayne.edu