Secrecy-Verifiability Paradox in Smart Contracts

TL;DR

This paper addresses the secrecy-verifiability paradox in smart contracts by proposing a blockchain-based method that enables cryptographic verification of private contracts without revealing sensitive data, even if the contract's original form is destroyed.

Contribution

It introduces a novel blockchain protocol that stores verifiable evidence to ensure privacy and verifiability without trusted third parties or revealing contract details.

Findings

Enables cryptographic verification of private contracts.

Supports verification even after contract destruction.

Provides a blockchain-based solution for secrecy and verifiability.

Abstract

The trade-off of secrecy is the difficulty of verification. This trade-off means that contracts must be kept private, yet their compliance needs to be verified, which we call the secrecy-verifiability paradox. However, the existing smart contracts are not designed to provide secrecy in this context without sacrificing verifiability. Without a trusted third party for notarization, the protocol for the verification of smart contracts has to be built on cryptographic primitives. We propose a blockchain-based solution that overcomes this challenge by storing the verifiable evidence as accessible data on a blockchain in an appropriate manner. This solution allows for cryptographic data verification but not revealing the data itself. In addition, with our proposal, it is possible to verify contracts whose form of existence has been destroyed as long as the contract is real and the people involved remember it.