Anonymous Credit

Ben Laurie ben at algroup.co.uk
Sun, 02 Sep 2001 18:38:33 +0100


Pete Chown wrote:
> 
> Ben Laurie wrote:
> 
> > At the head of the stream, present a signature for X_0. X_0 is the hash
> > of the concenation of the first block of data and X_1. X_1 is the hash
> > of the concatenation of the second block and X_2, and so forth.
> 
> A scheme a bit like this has been proposed for micropayments in mobile
> phone networks.  You pick a random number t0, then:
> 
> t1 = h(t0)
> t2 = h(t1)
> 
> and so on.  Finally you sign tn.  To make a payment you release first
> tn, then tn-1, tn-2 and so on.  The idea is that you don't have to
> release the value encapsulated in the signature all at once.

Slightly scary, in that losing any intermediate t_k would screw it up.
BTW, what sort of value payments are these intended to be (coz my
calculations over a year ago indicated that you could use Wagner-blinded
signatures down to .01p easily and I expect that has improved)?

Cheers,

Ben.

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