Enhancing Privacy and Integrity in Computing Services Provisioning Using Blockchain and Zk-SNARKs

Abstract

The widespread integration of on-demand services founded on proprietary algorithms into various software applications has ushered into a new era of advanced service capabilities. However, using these services entails disclosing information by the customer, not only during the payment process but also when using the service, where certain personal information must be shared to obtain a more personalized service. This practice potentially exposes users to increased security risks in case of data security breaches. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework aimed at enhancing client privacy and ensuring service integrity within the context of computing services that rely on proprietary algorithms. A blockchain-based approach is proposed to enhance user privacy throughout service provision, encompassing both the payment process and the verification of the provided service. Our proposal leverages properties of distributed ledger networks to improve user privacy during payment transactions and incorporates a verification system using zero-knowledge proofs on blockchain to validate the integrity of the contracted service. Finally, we analyze the privacy, overhead, and performance aspects of the framework, employing custom proprietary algorithms. We illustrate this through examples of Convolutional Neural Networks with multiple layers, undisclosed to the client. This emphasizes the potential benefits of its applicability for both service providers and clients.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• proprietary algorithms
• service verification
• privacy
• zk-SNARKs