Secure Maximum Weight Matching Approximation on General Graphs

Abstract

Privacy-preserving protocols for matchings on general graphs can be used for applications such as online dating, bartering, or kidney donor exchange. In addition, they can act as a building block for more complex protocols. While privacy-preserving protocols for matchings on bipartite graphs are a well-researched topic, the case of general graphs has experienced significantly less attention so far. We address this gap by providing the first privacy-preserving protocol for maximum weight matching on general graphs. To maximize the scalability of our approach, we compute an 1/2-approximation instead of an exact solution. For N nodes, our protocol requires O(N log N) rounds, O(N^3) communication, and runs in only 12.5 minutes for N=400.