Abstract

Demand for data transactions has increased in various fields with the development of computing technology. Several trading platforms have emerged to cater to this demand; however, most platforms were designed with a centralized model, which has led to performance, security, and privacy concerns. In addition, an increasing number of businesses are using only private platforms for trading to maintain trade secrets. However, these platforms present security and fairness challenges, e.g., denial of their actions by transaction participants and reliance on the trust of trusted third parties (TTPs). To solve these problems, several studies have used blockchain to construct secure data trading platforms. However, in most cases, decentralization is still not satisfied, such as TTP intervention in the initial setting process of the protocol. This paper proposes a secure and fair data trading protocol using blockchain technology. The proposed protocol eliminates the intervention of TTP by using a randomized arbitrator node selection method for dispute resolution. Furthermore, all-or-nothing transform (AONT) and dual-receiver cryptosystem (DRC) techniques are applied to ensure the requirements for a fair trading platform such as fairness, timeliness and data confidentiality.