Practical Escrow Protocol for Bitcoin
Xiao Yang, Wang Fat Lau, Qingqing Ye, Man Ho Au, Joseph K. Liu, Jacob Cheng
Abstract
An escrow protocol for Bitcoin allows fair trading using bitcoins. To ensure fairness, the existing proposals made various trade-offs between trust, privacy, and efficiency. In this work, we evaluate the existing escrow protocols for cryptocurrency and propose a practical escrow protocol for Bitcoin that is: (a) computationally efficient; (b) round efficient; and (c) privacy-preserving. The core component of our escrow protocol for Bitcoin is a new verifiably encrypted ECDSA scheme, which may be of independent interest. Furthermore, we implement the escrow protocol for Bitcoin in Bitcoin mainnet, demonstrating the feasibility of our protocol.
Topics & Concepts
EscrowKey escrowComputer scienceProtocol (science)Computer securityCryptocurrencyEncryptionCryptographyCryptographic protocolComputer networkPublic-key cryptographyAlternative medicineMedicinePathologyCryptography and Data SecurityBlockchain Technology Applications and SecurityInternet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting