When i churn/mix multiple account's XMR and then combine the outputs into a single account, i have compromised my anonymization effort? (self.monero)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by hetzlemmingsworld to c/monero@monero.town

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Hello,

if I am using several Monero receiving accounts (like “cash”, “work”, “trading”, “mining”, “donations”) and for each of the account i have secondary account into which i repeatedly sweep my receiving account's balance in order to churn/mix my XMR (e.g. cash -> cash2nd).

What if:

A) I "combine" the XMR again in the second "level" of my XMR accounts (account called common3rd):

cash     -> cash2nd    -> common3rd
work     -> work2nd    -> common3rd
trading  -> trading2nd -> common3rd -> 3rd party (big payment which would combine most/all outputs)

B) I split each churning/mixing transaction into several a small outputs:

cash -> output 1 - cash2nd
     -> output 2 - work2nd
     -> output 3 - trading2nd
and then spend from all these 2nd accounts in one big transaction

Is better (anonymity-wise) A or B and why or you suggest better direction?

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[-] jeffro256@monero.town 0 points 4 months ago

Both are bad for privacy, but B is especially horrendous. Every time you consolidate transaction outputs like this, you are yelling at the people you received money from: "HELLO! REMEMBER WHEN YOU SENT ME MONEY? I AM CONSOLIDATING THAT IN THIS TRANSACTION RIGHT NOW". When that transaction is the SAME transaction to actually spend those funds to someone else (AKA scenario B), you lose almost all plausible deniability about the origin of the funds. For the love of everything holy, PLEASE do not "churn" like this. I don't mean to sound harsh, but since you do not know anything about coin control yet, I would recommend staying away from churning and consolidations at the moment. The most private way to send money to someone is NOT to consolidate ever. Sweep each output to them individually, one at a time, in separate transactions over multiple hours with random timings. However, if you insist on consolidating everything into one output before sending it to them, there's a couple rules to live by: A) NEVER consolidate outputs AND spend them in the same transaction (i.e. only ever consolidate to an output address that you own), B) never consolidate more than 2 outputs at a time, C) use random delays when churning, D) if you are trying to keep different receiver identities (subaddresses) unlinked from one another, don't consolidate outputs from those different identities in the same transaction E) once everything is in one output, do at least one extra 1-input tx churn to yourself before spending (after a random delay of course).

[-] hetzlemmingsworld 1 points 4 months ago

I will need to consolidate/sweep hundreds of transactions maybe once per year and pay it to someone in one big transaction. This big transaction is mandatory, i can not pay them in small amounts. The plan on how to proceed is already mentioned below when you search for "C)" on this page. Please if it is wrong or if you have an improvement idea (anonymity-wise), comment on that below. Thank you