Verifiable transaction atomicity for electronic payment protocols

Abstract

We study the transaction atomicity problem for designing electronic payment protocols in distributed systems. We observe that the techniques that are used to guarantee transaction atomicity in a database system are not robust enough to guarantee transaction atomicity in an electronic payment system, in which a set of dishonest or malicious participants may exhibit unpredictable behavior and cause arbitrary failures. We present a new concept-verifiable transaction atomicity-for designing electronic payment protocols. We give formal specifications to the verifiable atomic commitment problem. Then we design a robust electronic currency system to meet the specifications and achieve the verifiable transaction atomicity.