FAIR EXCHANGE: THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL BELONGINGS

As more of our lives are spent interacting digitally — sending and receiving payments, interacting on social media, using certified delivery, playing games online, and generally participating in the digital world — the fair exchange of our digital belongings becomes increasingly essential.

This book delves into the theory of fair exchange, from the historic to the cutting-edge, and presents a unified framework for understanding fair exchange protocols. Every exchange starts with a handshake, which is followed by four additional operations: deposit; verification; synchronization; and release or restoration. The environments in which these operations take place determine the properties of the resulting protocol, and the characteristics of the items that can be exchanged.

Existing protocols are examined through this framework, including escrow-based protocols, optimistic protocols, and gradual release protocols. A new family of fair exchange protocols is developed which make use of attestables, a novel interface for exfiltration-resistant computing. An attestable-based protocol called FEWD is also introduced and several variations are described which are suitable for the exchange of different classes of items.

Finally, a number of special topics for fair exchange are introduced, including legal issues that can emerge in practical applications of fair exchange, a legal analysis of the basic operations of fair exchange, commercial applications of FEWD, and an analysis of additional risks including participant expectations and implementations of attestable-based protocols. We conclude with a collection of topics for future research in making fair exchange more ubiquitous in our lives for a fairer digital world.

Contents:

• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Roadmap
• A Framework for Fair Exchange:
  • Fair Exchange Protocols
  • Categories of Items
  • The Operations of Fair Exchange
  • Environments for Operations
  • A Diagram Language for Fair Exchange
  • The Fundamental Limits of Fair Exchange
  • Attestables
• Protocols Old and New:
  • Categorization of Fair Exchange Protocols
  • Escrow-based Fair Exchange Protocols
  • Optimistic Fair Exchange Protocols
  • Gradual Release Fair Exchange Protocols
  • Attestable-based Fair Exchange Protocols
  • FEWD: Fair Exchange Without Disputes
  • The Family FEWD
• Real-world Fair Exchange:
  • Risk Analysis
  • Legal Considerations
  • Operational Concerns
  • Commercial Analysis and Use Cases
  • Additional Uses and Future Work
  • Glossary
• References
• Index

Readership: Researchers (from academia and industry); Industry practitioners (technology, e-commerce, marketplaces); Postgraduate students; Libraries.

Key Features:

• Offers a comprehensive analysis of fair exchange that spans cryptography, hardware, software, applications, and the commercial and legal implications of fair exchange
• Establishes fair exchange as a fundamental computer science topic and makes it accessible, with detailed protocol diagrams for new and experienced practitioners, academics and industry professionals
• Motivates the development of new fair exchange protocols that meet the requirements of increasingly demanding online business and commercial applications in the digital economy
• As the digital economy becomes increasingly global and ever more entrenched in our daily lives, fair exchange is a fundamental building block to making digital interactions more trustworthy
• Presents a new fair exchange protocol with superior properties to existing protocols