A second-price sealed-bid auction with verifiable discriminant of po-th root

Abstract

A second-price sealed-bid auction is that a bidder who offers the highest price gets a good in the second highest price. This style of auction solves the problems of both an English auction and a first-price sealed-bid auction. An electronic first-price sealed-bid auction cannot directly be applied to a second-price sealed-bid auction which keeps the highest bid secret. We propose the verifiable discriminant function of the po-th root. Our auction scheme satisfies public verifiability of auction results, and also does not have a single entity who knows the highest bid value even after an auction. Furthermore the bidding cost of our scheme is lower than that of the previous one.