4P_VES: A collusion-resistant accountable virtual economy system

Abstract

Virtual economy develops rapidly and accounts for quite a large proportion in the entire economy. Markets of virtual goods, such as games, apps and cloud services, are quite active and contribute a lot to the revenue of platforms and providers. The existing virtual economy systems mainly rely on the trustworthiness of the platforms who maintain the accounts of all participants, which is short of transparency. Another concern is how to maintain the market order when conspiracy between participants happens. In this paper, we extend the Verito scheme (NDSS 2013) and introduce a new participant Payment to obtain our 4P VES scheme, in which collusion between two parties can be detected while satisfying required properties of transparency and accountability at the same time. We also analyze the properties and prove the security of our scheme. Finally, we evaluate the additional cost compared with Verito and find that our scheme is a cost affordable and practical one which enhances the system’s independency and security.