Change-Address Heuristics (UTXO Analysis)

Core idea

Analyses Unspent Transaction Output structure to distinguish the payment output from the change output returned to the sender, refining clustering accuracy via value and script-type patterns.

When to use

Refining CIOH clusters, or when a transaction’s true counterparties are ambiguous.

Avoid when

Purely probabilistic; label it as inference, not fact, in any report submitted as evidence.

Example

Of two outputs, the one matching the sender’s script type and returning an odd remainder is inferred to be change and folded into the spender’s cluster.

Related

Address Clustering (Common-Input-Ownership Heuristic)