Practical Secrecy-Preserving, Verifiably Correct and Trustworthy Auctions David C. Parkes ∗ Harvard University SEAS, Cambridge, MA Michael O. Rabin Harvard University SEAS, Cambridge, MA Stuart M. Shieber Harvard University SEAS, Cambridge, MA Christopher Thorpe Harvard University SEAS, Cambridge, MA Abstract We present a practical protocol based on homomorphic cryptography for conducting provably fair sealed-bid auctions. The system preserves the secrecy of the bids, even after the announcement of auction results, while also providing for public verifiability of the cor- rectness and trustworthiness of the outcome. No party, including the auctioneer, receives any information about bids before the auction closes, and no bidder is able to change or repudiate any bid. The system is illustrated through application to first-price, uniform-price and second-price auctions, including multi-item auctions. Empirical results based on an analysis of a prototype demonstrate the practicality of our protocol for real-world applica- tions. Key words: Auctions, auction theory, cryptographic auctions, cryptography, e-commerce, electronic transactions, homomorphic cryptography, security. ∗ Corresponding author. Address: 33 Oxford St., Cambridge MA 02138, USA. Tel.: +1- 617-384-8130. Fax: +1-617-495-9837. Email addresses:
[email protected] (David C. Parkes),
[email protected] (Michael O. Rabin),
[email protected] (Stuart M. Shieber),
[email protected] (Christopher Thorpe). Preprint submitted to Elsevier 16 April 2008 1 Introduction In recent years, auctions and electronic marketplaces have been used to facilitate trillions of dollars in trade in the world economy [25]. Auctions, in particular, are often adopted to promote the ideal of competitive pricing and economic ef- ficiency [44,8].