An efficient hybrid sealed bid auction protocol

Abstract

This paper proposes a new sealed bid auction protocol for internet-based auction, which is based on an earlier developed sealed bid auction protocol called the “hash chain sealed bid auction protocol” by Suzuki, Kobayashi, and Morita in [10]. The protocol proposed in this paper depends on a hybrid approach of public key cryptography and one-way hash functions. A hash chain is used to commit the exact bidding price while the range in which this price exists is secured through public key cryptography. This hybrid approach maintains all the prominent features that distinguish the original hash chain protocol such as keeping the secrecy of the losing bids even from the auctioneer and reducing the size of the bid commitment while making the modified hash chain protocol more efficient and practical than the original hash chain protocol that is purely based on one-way hash functions. Furthermore, our approach does not totally depend on public key cryptography, which is very costly. Our approach experiences less network delay at bid opening time and does not require user interaction during bid opening, as in the original hash chain protocol, which increases the practicality and the applicability of the protocol.