Towards Smart Contract-based Verification of Anonymous Credentials

Robert Muth; Tarek Galal; Jonathan Heiss; Florian Tschorsch

Paper 2022/492

Towards Smart Contract-based Verification of Anonymous Credentials

Robert Muth, Tarek Galal, Jonathan Heiss, and Florian Tschorsch

Abstract

Smart contracts often need to verify identity-related information of their users. However, such information is typically confidential, and its verification requires access to off-chain resources. Given the isolation and privacy limitations of blockchain technologies, this presents a problem for on-chain verification. In this paper, we show how CL-signature-based anonymous credentials can be verified in smart contracts using the example of Hyperledger Indy, a decentralized credential management platform, and Ethereum, a smart contract-enabled blockchain. Therefore, we first outline how smart contract-based verification can be integrated in the Hyperledger Indy credential management routine and, then, provide a technical evaluation based on a proof-of-concept implementation of CL-signature verification on Ethereum. While our results demonstrate technical feasibility of smart contract-based verification of anonymous credentials, they also reveal technical barriers for its real-world usage.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Minor revision. 6th Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts at the International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security
Keywords: blockchains anonymous credentials zero knowledge
Contact author(s): muth @ tu-berlin de
tgalal @ mail tu-berlin de
j heiss @ tu-berlin de
florian tschorsch @ tu-berlin de
History: 2022-04-23: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2022/492
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2022/492,
      author = {Robert Muth and Tarek Galal and Jonathan Heiss and Florian Tschorsch},
      title = {Towards Smart Contract-based Verification of Anonymous Credentials},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2022/492},
      year = {2022},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/492}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/492}
}