Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT Trading

With the rapid development of Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market, various types of digital artwork are published via NFT in recent years for sale. In the current NFT system, owner’s address of each NFT is stored in plaintext. This leads to a severe privacy problem: once a person’s...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhanwen Chen, Kazumasa Omote
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2022-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982643/
_version_ 1811291190983655424
author Zhanwen Chen
Kazumasa Omote
author_facet Zhanwen Chen
Kazumasa Omote
author_sort Zhanwen Chen
collection DOAJ
description With the rapid development of Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market, various types of digital artwork are published via NFT in recent years for sale. In the current NFT system, owner’s address of each NFT is stored in plaintext. This leads to a severe privacy problem: once a person’s blockchain address is known, all his NFT assets are viewable, which may further cause problems related to the privacy of holding sensitive NFT or premeditated scams to high-value NFT owners. However, due to the limitation of Ethereum and smart contract, it is hard to prevent others from tracking the owner of NFT. Meanwhile, current state-of-the-art NFT research usually assumes the relation between blockchain address and owner’s identity is unknown, thus creating the so-called anonymity. In this paper, based on the most popular NFT marketplace OpenSea’s system, we propose a new exchange scheme to hides the address of NFT owner during trading. To achieve our goal, a proof of commitment scheme is exploited to bind the owner to an NFT while hiding the identity. Moreover, An anonymous payment method is designed to prevent attackers from tracing the Ether flow in NFT trading. Our scheme is proven to be secure against curious users and malicious active attackers. Implementation on testnet also shows that the increased gas cost is acceptable, meaning it is suitable for application.
first_indexed 2024-04-13T04:25:40Z
format Article
id doaj.art-21238f3135d34aafa265b5a719703e58
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2169-3536
language English
last_indexed 2024-04-13T04:25:40Z
publishDate 2022-01-01
publisher IEEE
record_format Article
series IEEE Access
spelling doaj.art-21238f3135d34aafa265b5a719703e582022-12-22T03:02:33ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362022-01-011013016613017610.1109/ACCESS.2022.32287879982643Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT TradingZhanwen Chen0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6431-2319Kazumasa Omote1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1371-4454Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, JapanFaculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, JapanWith the rapid development of Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market, various types of digital artwork are published via NFT in recent years for sale. In the current NFT system, owner’s address of each NFT is stored in plaintext. This leads to a severe privacy problem: once a person’s blockchain address is known, all his NFT assets are viewable, which may further cause problems related to the privacy of holding sensitive NFT or premeditated scams to high-value NFT owners. However, due to the limitation of Ethereum and smart contract, it is hard to prevent others from tracking the owner of NFT. Meanwhile, current state-of-the-art NFT research usually assumes the relation between blockchain address and owner’s identity is unknown, thus creating the so-called anonymity. In this paper, based on the most popular NFT marketplace OpenSea’s system, we propose a new exchange scheme to hides the address of NFT owner during trading. To achieve our goal, a proof of commitment scheme is exploited to bind the owner to an NFT while hiding the identity. Moreover, An anonymous payment method is designed to prevent attackers from tracing the Ether flow in NFT trading. Our scheme is proven to be secure against curious users and malicious active attackers. Implementation on testnet also shows that the increased gas cost is acceptable, meaning it is suitable for application.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982643/Non-fungible tokenowner privacyblockchainsecurity
spellingShingle Zhanwen Chen
Kazumasa Omote
Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT Trading
IEEE Access
Non-fungible token
owner privacy
blockchain
security
title Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT Trading
title_full Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT Trading
title_fullStr Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT Trading
title_full_unstemmed Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT Trading
title_short Toward Achieving Anonymous NFT Trading
title_sort toward achieving anonymous nft trading
topic Non-fungible token
owner privacy
blockchain
security
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9982643/
work_keys_str_mv AT zhanwenchen towardachievinganonymousnfttrading
AT kazumasaomote towardachievinganonymousnfttrading