# TAS-GNN: A Status-Aware Signed Graph Neural Network for Anomaly Detection in Bitcoin Trust Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.13290 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13290/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Enhancing Graph Neural Network-based Fraud Detectors against Camouflaged Fraudsters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08692/) (2020)
- [Rethinking Graph Neural Networks for Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15508/) (2022)
- [Signed Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.10958/) (2019)
- [SDGNN: Learning Node Representation for Signed Directed Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02390/) (2021)
- [Deep Graph Anomaly Detection: A Survey and New Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09957/) (2024)
- [SmoothGNN: Smoothing-aware GNN for Unsupervised Node Anomaly Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17525/) (2024)
- [Signed Graph Representation Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15980/) (2024)
- [BIRDNEST: Bayesian Inference for Ratings-Fraud Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06030/) (2015)
- [Enhancing Link Prediction with Fuzzy Graph Attention Networks and Dynamic Negative Sampling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07482/) (2024)
- [Multi-view Fuzzy Graph Attention Networks for Enhanced Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17271/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Decentralized financial platforms rely heavily on Web of Trust reputation systems to mitigate counterparty risk in the absence of centralized identity verification. However, these pseudonymous networks are inherently vulnerable to adversarial behaviors, such as Sybil attacks and camouflaged fraud, where malicious actors cultivate artificial reputations before executing exit scams. Traditional anomaly detection in this domain faces two critical limitations. First, reliance on naive statistical heuristics (e.g., flagging the lowest 5% of rated users) fails to distinguish between victims of bad-mouthing attacks and actual fraudsters. Second, standard Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) operate on the assumption of homophily and cannot effectively process the semantic inversion inherent in signed (trust vs. distrust) and directed (status) edges. We propose TAS-GNN (Topology-Aware Signed Graph Neural Network), a novel framework designed for feature-sparse signed networks like Bitcoin-Alpha. TAS-GNN integrates recursive Web-of-Trust labeling and a dual-channel message-passing architecture that separately models trust and distrust signals, fused through a Status-Aware Attention mechanism. Experiments demonstrate that TAS-GNN achieves state-of-the-art performance, significantly outperforming existing signed GNN baselines.