Anonymous Payment Tokens for Fair Peer-to-Peer Content Rewards
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Solution Overview
Problem
In peer-to-peer networks, consumers' identities are often revealed to content distributors during payment transactions, and some users free-ride on storage and communication resources provided by others, compromising privacy and fairness.
Innovation Solution
A method involving ephemeral public-private key pairs and digital payment tokens is used to enable anonymous payments, where consumers generate ephemeral keys for token purchase and add assignment layers with payment service keys, ensuring anonymity and rewarding peers for resource contribution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If consumers make direct payments to content distributors, then payment processing is simple, but consumer identity is revealed to the distributor compromising privacy
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a payment service as an intermediary between consumers and content distributors. The payment service receives payments from consumers and distributes them to content distributors and peers, preventing direct exposure of consumer identity to distributors while still enabling payment processing. This mediator resolves the contradiction by maintaining operational simplicity through centralized payment handling while protecting consumer privacy through indirect payment routing.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the payment process into distinct functional layers: consumer-to-payment-service payment, payment-service-to-peer distribution, and peer-to-content-delivery contribution. By dividing the payment flow into separate stages with different participants, the system maintains operational simplicity at each stage while preventing any single party (including content distributors) from obtaining complete consumer identity information.
2Reliability
If content distributors directly manage peer-to-peer networks, then content delivery control is maintained, but user privacy is compromised through direct identification
Solution Approach 1:
The payment service acts as an intermediary that enables content distributors to compensate peers without directly identifying them. The payment service receives anonymous or pseudonymous payment information from consumers and distributes payments to peers based on their contributions, allowing content distributors to maintain delivery control through the payment mechanism while preventing direct identification of users involved in the peer-to-peer network.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the identification function from the content delivery control mechanism. Instead of requiring content distributors to directly identify and manage peer relationships, the system separates identity management (handled by the payment service) from content delivery control (handled by the distributor). This extraction allows distributors to maintain control over content distribution while removing the harmful direct identification aspect.
3Productivity
If peers contribute storage and communication resources, then network efficiency improves, but free-riding users can exploit the system without contributing
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a feedback mechanism where the payment service monitors peer contributions (storage and communication resources) and automatically distributes payments based on measured contribution levels. This feedback loop ensures that peers who contribute resources receive proportional compensation, while free-riders who do not contribute receive no payment, thereby maintaining fairness and preventing exploitation of the peer-to-peer network.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the parameter of peer compensation from fixed or manual to dynamic and automated based on contribution metrics. The payment service adjusts payment amounts according to measured storage and communication resource contributions, creating a responsive system that automatically rewards productive peers and excludes free-riders, thus maintaining network efficiency and fairness simultaneously.
Data Source
AI summary
A peer-to-peer content provision network is disclosed which implements a privacy-preserving payment mechanism for rewarding actors in the network (for example, a content supplier, a content distributor and storage-contributing peers). To reward some or all of those actors, a user device obtains, from a token service, anonymous digital payment tokens which include an ephemeral public key. Payment is achieved by adding an assignment layer to the token which involves combining a payee ephemeral public key with the token, and applying a digital signature to the combination using the ephemeral private key corresponding to the ephemeral public key in the token. Subsequent assignments can be made by the payee by adding a further assignment layer to the token using a payee ephemeral private key which pairs with the payee ephemeral public key in the received token. A payment service can divide a payment from the user between actors in the network.