Fair Delegation of Digital Services Without Third Parties

Abstract

The software architecture of most applications is more and more fragmented, and relying on micro-services. Moreover, some parts may be specialized, and a customer may choose to delegate a task to a service provider. In this situation, the customer must be sure to get results that comply with the task when they pay the service provider, and inversely. We propose a framework based on atomic swaps to enable such simultaneous exchanges. Our scheme is based on exchanging a transactional key during an atomic swap. Our framework protects both actors, and enables non-repudiation, from both sides, even in an asynchronous environment.