EPPDL: An efficient privacy-preserving distributed ledger for digital asset transfer in Web3.0

Abstract

Nowadays, a new generation of decentralized internet framework, coined as Web3.0, is emerging. However, due to the insufficient computing power on the user side and the know-your-customer regulatory requirements, it is unrealistic to fully achieve decentralization in Web3.0 currently. The service provider-intermediated architecture seems more practical by including federated service providers. At the same time, in order to fully stimulate users to create and share contents in the era of Web3.0, the importance of digital assets, e.g., digit tokens and cryptocurrencies, is increasing. As a result, whether digital asset transfer can be securely and efficiently accommodated determines the further development of Web3.0. Blockchain is believed to be one effective solution to guarantee the security of digital asset transfer. However, existing works either target fully decentralized scenarios or fail to settle digital asset transfers with high efficiency. Thus in this paper, a formal yet novel service provider-intermediated architecture is firstly proposed to closely align with the practical requirements of Web3.0. Then, an efficient privacy-preserving distributed ledger construction protocol, coined as EPPDL, is proposed to safeguard digital asset transfer among users registered at different service providers. Concrete security analysis proves that the proposed EPPDL is secure against different types of adversaries, while comprehensive experiments verify its efficiency and effectiveness.