Dispute Resolution for Smart Contract-based Two-Party Protocols

Abstract

Blockchain systems promise to mediate interactions of mutually distrusting parties without a trusted third party. However, protocols with full smart contract-based security are either limited in functionality or complex, with high costs for secured interactions. This observation leads to the development of protocol-specific schemes to avoid costly dispute resolution in case all participants remain honest. In this paper, we introduce SmartJudge, an extensible generalization of this trend for smart contract-based two-party protocols. SmartJudge relies on a protocol-independent mediator smart contract that moderates two-party interactions and only consults protocol-specific verifier smart contracts in case of a dispute. This way, SmartJudge avoids verification costs in absence of disputes and sustains interaction confidentiality among honest parties. We implement verifier smart contracts for cross-blockchain trades and exchanging digital goods and show that SmartJudge can reduce costs by 46-50% and 22% over current state of the art, respectively.

Publication
Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2019)
Event
2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC '19), May 14 - May 17, 2019, Seoul, South Korea
Eric Wagner, M.Sc.
Eric Wagner, M.Sc.
External Researcher / FKIE
Placeholder Avatar
Achim Völker
Frederik Fuhrmann
Frederik Fuhrmann
Klaus Wehrle
Klaus Wehrle
Head of Group