Anonymous Auction Protocol Research Articles

The cost of privacy on blockchain: A study on sealed-bid auctions

In order to preserve privacy in a blockchain ecosystem, the main objective is to keep a transaction's data private, such as the sender, the receiver, and the amount transferred. The current work studies the cryptographic tools commonly used to achieve this type of privacy, primarily focusing on the Ethereum blockchain. Such tools usually require many computational and storage resources, leading to additional fees. An anonymous auction protocol was developed as a case study to explore these costs, where hiding the identity and the amount of the bids utilizes a variety of cryptographic primitives. The proposed implementation was compared against three sealed-bid auction protocols, which utilize similar cryptographic tools for preserving privacy throughout the auction process. The results show that providing an additional level of anonymity, such as hiding someone's identity, can increase the gas cost significantly, up to 2.5 times, depending on the choice of the cryptographic tools, which determine the usage of the blockchain's storage and computational resources. By adjusting the level of decentralization on the application level by moving some operations off-chain and maintaining the role of the auctioneer, we show that we can maintain anonymity while reducing the gas cost by 40%.

BA2P : Bidirectional and Anonymous Auction Protocol with Dispute-Freeness

Electronic auction is a popular platform to sell goods, task assignment, and resources’ allocation due to reductions of transaction costs and has attracted a huge number of potential buyers. However, it is challenging to address the disputes between the buyer and the auctioneer. The main reason is, on the one hand, solving such problem leverages to the broad domain of research aspects, such as economic theory, engineering, and cryptography, and, on the other hand, it is difficult to arbitrate in a decentralized and anonymous setting. In this work, we consider a more general framework to solve the potential disputes by enforcing bidirectional confirmation and public verification. Hence, the bidding procedure is clear to inspect and potential disputes can be erased. To achieve this goal, we propose policy-driven chameleon hash and revised linkable-and-redactable ring signature as building blocks. We used these two tools to build a bidirectional and anonymous auction protocol called BA 2 P. In our BA 2 P protocol, the bidders can competitively and anonymously place their bids to outbid others. At the end of the auction protocol, everyone can verify the validity of the bidding proof and decide the winner. Thus, dispute-freeness feature is achieved. The analysis suggests that our proposal is provably secure and practically efficient, and it trades some efficiencies with dispute-freeness feature.

Anonymous Auction Protocol Based on Timed-Release Encryption Atop Consortium Blockchain

Anonymous Auction Protocol Based on Timed-Release Encryption Atop Consortium Blockchain

Anonymous Auction Protocol Based on Time-Released Encryption Atop Consortium BlockChain

The Ethereum blockchain as a decentralized platform is so successful that many applications deployed on it. However, for the inherent transparency properties and the lack of privacy, deploying a financial application on top of it is always a challenge. In this paper, we tackle this challenge and propose an anonymous sealed-bid auction protocol based on time-released encryption atop Consortium Blockchain. We adopt a strict digital certificate-based identity mechanism of the consortium blockchain to permit legitimate participants, and utilize the blind signature based on elliptic curve technology to allowing anonymous participation. Moreover, a timed release public key encryption algorithm is adopted to encrypt bids and prevent auctioneer from colluding with bidders. This is completely different from the method (zero-knowledge proof) used in other papers to prevent collusion between auctioneer and bidder. We provide a specific analysis of our protocol, which shows that our protocol meets anonymity and applicability.

Practical electronic auction scheme with strong anonymity and bidding privacy

In 2003, Chang and Chang proposed an efficient and anonymous auction protocol with freewheeling bids. They claimed that their scheme could ensure the bidders’ anonymity and secure confidentiality. Later, Jiang et al. pointed out that their scheme could not withstand the man-in-the-middle attacks; during this time, Jiang et al. proposed an improved scheme based on the scheme by Chang and Chang. In 2006, Chang and Chang proposed an anonymous auction scheme that was much more efficient than the abovementioned schemes. However, all of these three schemes were unable to achieve strong anonymity, bidding privacy, and secret bidding prices for sealed-bids. This article proposes a new scheme to resolve the above problems in which two managers and zero knowledge proof are used. The proposed scheme can be widely applied in any sensitive auction (e.g., auctions of cosmetics, medical services, etc.). Moreover, the proposed scheme also satisfies the following requirements: (1) bidding privacy, (2) strong anonymity, (3) secret bidding prices, (4) unforgeability, (5) verifiability, (6) non-repudiation, (7) traceability, (8) one-time registration and (9) easy revocation.

An efficient multi-round anonymous auction protocol

In this paper, we shall propose an efficient multi-round anonymous auction protocol. In the many literatures concerned, when more than one party bidding the same highest price for merchandise, all the bidders must re-participate in the auction again. It is inefficient. In this paper, the proposed protocol can make the auction easier. In our system, we first pick out the bidders offering the same highest price as the winners of the first round. Then, all the bidders need not re-participate in the auction again; only the winners of the first round have to come back for the second round.

An improvement on efficient anonymous auction protocols

In this paper, we propose an improvement on Chang et al.'s efficient anonymous auction protocols to overcome the security weakness in initiation phase of Chang et al.'s scheme. At first, we formally analyze the initiation phase of Chang et al.'s scheme on the basis of authentication tests to disclose the insecurity of the initiation phase. Then we give our attack to the initiation phase, which can make the following auction phase fail to run. Later, we propose our improvement on the initiation phase. Finally, we formally analyze our improved scheme with authentication tests, and prove the security of our improved scheme. Our improved scheme can preserve the merits of Chang et al.'s scheme and overcome the security weakness in initiation phase of Chang et al.'s scheme.

Efficient anonymous auction protocols with freewheeling bids

The need for electronic auction services has been increasing in recent years. Taking security into account, anonymity of online bidders becomes more important than it used to be. However, bidders cannot bid of his/her free will in existing anonymous auction protocols. For real-time applications, time delays are the significant factor taken into account. As a result, the proposed paper presents a simple and efficient method to ensure that the bidders can bid arbitrarily and anonymously.