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Coinpath for Ledger-Based Networks

Payment ledger blockchains, as Stellar and Ripple, impose additional complexity due to the following features of payment transactions:

  1. Payments can be sent in one currency and received in another currency. This means that the money flow graph must be able to track the conversion of currencies between addresses.
  2. There may be multiple conversions between currencies in one payment transaction. This means that the money flow graph must be able to track all of the conversions that occur in a single transaction.
  3. Currencies may have multiple issuers. This means that the money flow graph must be able to track the flow of money between different issuers of the same currency.
  4. Blockchain API for Ripple does not allow to explicitly determine all transfers between addresses in scope of one transaction. This means that the money flow graph must be able to infer all of the transfers that occur in a single transaction, even if they are not explicitly specified in the blockchain data.

To address these challenges, the money flow graph implementation for payment ledger blockchains makes the following adaptations:

  • Every transfer have separately defined sent and received amounts, with sent and received currencies, that may be different.
  • Pre-processing extracts all value transfers between addresses, even when they are implicitly done inside a transaction.
  • The money flow graph represents edges with different currencies on the same path.
  • The money flow graph allows the same address to exist on the path on level N and N+1 (transferring himself as a result of trading).
  • Only "taker" trades appear in the money flow result, as the "maker" side is not involved in the money flow path.