Efficient and Secure Blockchain System for Digital Content Trading

Blockchain is attracting attention as a new solution for problems such as illegal copying, profit distribution, and forgery and falsification in the digital content trading environment, which has become an essential asset in the information age. However, one problem is that it is difficult to propagate digital content to the blockchain network because of a limited capacity to upload to the blockchain. The integrity and transparency of blockchain are also considered as weak points in terms of privacy. In this paper, we propose a new blockchain system, the secret block-based blockchain (SBBC), to address the problems with the blockchain system in the digital content trading environment. SBBC is composed of off-chain and on-chain network components. Off-chain is the part that allows trading digital content through the authentication phase. The digital content that is traded has a digital fingerprint inserted, so if an illegal leak occurs, the destination can be tracked. In addition, the content is encrypted and traded, and only the rightful user can use the digital content, thus ensuring income for the legitimate content author. Next, the on-chain network is licensed to use digital content, and a verification process using a consensus algorithm is performed. The licensed consumer creates a secret block of their transaction and records it only on their ledger. In a private part, secret block creation ensures privacy and solves the network overload that can occur when uploading digital content to the blockchain. Finally, through the verification and agreement of all blockchain participants, a public block is created and recorded in the ledger to finalize the transaction. Consequently, we propose the SBBC system suitable for digital content trading environments and a safe and reliable system through a consensus algorithm in such environments.