Distributed Bitcoin Account Management

Abstract

Bitcoin is a kind of novel distributed electronic cash free of any governmental influence and supervision. Its irreversibility, pseudonymity and unforgeability have made great developmental leaps in means of payment and investment management. However, when the application of the means of payment is applied in small and medium-sized enterprises or companies, bitcoin lacks the mechanism to be jointly managed. We propose a Distributed Bitcoin Account Management (DBAM) framework that realizes joint management of bitcoin accounts applied especially to enterprises and companies. The framework incorporates secret sharing and attribute based encryption schemes compatible with the existing bitcoin protocols. Each bitcoin account achieves fine-grained management of participants and prevents the private key from being unexpectedly recovered. Thorough analyses show that our framework is secure, practical and effective.