Verifiable transaction atomicity for electronic payment protocols
Lei Tang · 2002
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.