Sealed-Bid Micro Auctions

Abstract

In electronic auction applications, small-value merchandise is often distributed. We call this kind of auction micro auction. Compared to traditional general-purpose electronic auction, micro electronic auction has its own special requirements. Especially, micro auction must be very efficient: the cost of the auction protocol must not be over the cost of the merchandise for sale. Although the merchandise to distribute are of small value in micro auctions, bid privacy is still needed in many circumstances. So sealed-bid auction mechanism has to be employed in micro auction. Therefore, a question is raised: how to balance between the high efficiency requirement of micro auction and the high cost needed to keep bid privacy. In this paper, the traditional sealed-bid e-auction techniques are modified to satisfy the special requirements of sealed-bid micro auction. Two existing general-purpose electronic sealed-bid auction schemes are modified into micro sealed-bid auction schemes. The new schemes are secure and suitable for micro auction. One of them is further improved in efficiency to meet more critical requirements in certain micro auction applications.