An anonymous and fair auction system based on blockchain

Abstract Transaction volumes are growing rapidly, demonstrating how well-liked online auctions are with shoppers. Bidders can access a wider variety of products and sellers can reach a larger audience through online auction platforms. However, privacy concerns have reduced users' trust in auction platforms, and difficult disputes have caused consumers to question the fairness of online auctions, negatively impacting the market growth. The emergence of blockchain technology has brought a new approach to solving these problems. Blockchain is a new generation of information technology that is decentralized, transparent, traceable, anti-tampering, and unforgeable, following big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. In this paper, we present a blockchain-based online auction solution as well as an auction protocol that uses ring signatures to guarantee anonymity. Three features summarize this essay: (1) Making use of blockchain technology to ensure that the auction transaction process is transparent, traceable, tamper-proof, and unforgeable. (2) The ring signature-based anonymous auction protocol allows for the concealment of bidders' public keys in a group of public keys. Because malicious individuals are prevented from evaluating data by tracking numerous transactions of a single public key, this significantly protects the privacy of bidders. (3) The proposed scheme promotes auction fairness and effectively resolves disputes.