Beyond the Blockchain Address: Zero-Knowledge Address Abstraction

EasyChair Preprint 15829

Abstract

Merging Internet (web2) identities with blockchain (web3) identities is increasingly important for enhancing user experience and ensuring regulatory compliance. However, conventional solutions that map web2 identities to web3 accounts often lead to privacy concerns and fragmented identifiers across networks. To address these challenges, we propose a new identity scheme named Address Abstraction (AA), which redefines blockchain address and signing systems while preserving key properties: uniqueness, immutability, and privacy-preservation. This approach eliminates the limitations of chain-specific identity systems, enabling users to interact with multiple blockchains using their web2 certificates and unified identifiers. This chain-agnostic identifier also promotes cross-chain compatibility. We further present Zero-Knowledge Address Abstraction (zkAA), an implementation of AA that uses zero-knowledge proofs to uphold AA’s core properties. Additionally, a proof aggregation technique combines multiple proofs into one, achieving approximately 5.5 times gas cost savings during verification in real-world scenarios. As of August 2024, zkAA with proof aggregation incurs an additional cost of only $0.66 per transaction on Ethereum.

Keyphrases: Blockchain, Digital Identification, zero-knowledge proofs

@booklet{EasyChair:15829,
  author    = {Sanghyeon Park and Jeonghyuk Lee and Seunghwa Lee and Jung Hyun Chun and Hyeonmyeong Cho and Mingi Kim and Hyun Ki Cho and Soo-Mook Moon},
  title     = {Beyond the Blockchain Address: Zero-Knowledge Address Abstraction},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 15829},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2025}}