A Blockchain-based System for Secure Image Protection Using Zero-watermark

In the traditional image copyright protection system, watermarking technology is considered as an important technology to overcome the data protection problem and verify the data ownership relationship. However, the existing watermarking technology often needs a trusted third party to arbitrate in the implementation process, which may be difficult to find or costly. Meanwhile, the common image watermarking algorithm needs to operate the image data, which will inevitably lead to the image data loss. With the development of blockchain technology, the functions of de-trusted third parties and the fair and automatic processing characteristics of smart contracts attached to it have entered the public view. In this paper, we study the function of the zero-watermarking algorithm in image protection and its complete storage and authentication scheme, then propose a secure blockchain-based image copyright protection framework and build a system according to this framework. This framework combines blockchain and zero-watermark technology and uses interplanetary file system to solve the blockchain data expansion problem. Besides, the image owner can authenticate the image and realize the copyright traceability of the image. Furthermore, the keyword search function of the stored images in the system is realized based on a smart contract, which solves the problem of lack of trusted third parties. Experiment illustrates that the proposed scheme is feasible.