Noisy Transactions for Privacy in Distributed Ledger Consensus
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Solution Overview
Problem
Consortium distributed ledger systems face challenges in achieving Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus with fewer than three or four participants, leading to segmentation between private and public state databases, which increases system complexity and reduces privacy and security.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of noisy transactions, obfuscated using a transaction model and hash functions, allows private transactions to be processed through a global consensus protocol, eliminating the need for private state channels and maintaining only a public state database, thereby reducing complexity and enhancing security.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If private state databases are segmented from public state databases to achieve Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus with fewer participants, then consensus reliability is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges private state database and public state database into a single unified state database. All transactions including private transactions are recorded in the same state database, eliminating the need for segmentation. This reduces system complexity while maintaining consensus reliability through the use of noisy transactions and hash function-based identification.
2Loss of information
If private state channels are used to preserve privacy of private transactions, then privacy protection is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the privacy protection mechanism from the structural separation of state databases and instead embeds it within the transaction data itself through hash function-based identification. Private transactions contain unique identifiers that only authorized entities can recognize, while the underlying state database remains unified and simple.
3Measurement precision
If multiple private state databases are maintained to enable accurate validation of private transactions, then validation accuracy is improved, but resource usage increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses hash function-based identification as a virtual copy mechanism. Instead of maintaining multiple physical state databases, the system creates cryptographic identifiers (hashes) of private transaction data that can be verified without duplicating the actual transaction data. This maintains validation accuracy while minimizing resource consumption.
Data Source
AI summary
Implementations of the present disclosure include determining that a private transaction is to be recorded in a distributed ledger system (DLS) based on a consensus protocol executed by a set of entities participating in the DLS, the private transaction including a transaction between a subset of entities of the set of entities, providing a set of noisy transactions based on a transaction model, and transmitting data representative of at least a portion of the private transaction, and data representative of each noisy transaction in the set of noisy transactions for recording in the DLS based on the consensus protocol.