Confidential Token-Based License Management
This addresses the need for secure and private product life-cycle management for large industries like automotive or aviation, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing blockchain and token technologies.
The paper tackles the problem of confidential licensing and tracking of 3D printed parts in competitive industries by proposing a blockchain-based system that integrates unique eIDs and supports thousands of transactions per second.
In a global economy with many competitive participants, licensing and tracking of 3D printed parts is desirable if not mandatory for many use-cases. We investigate a blockchain-based approach, as blockchains provide many attractive features, like decentralized architecture and high security assurances. An often neglected aspect of the product life-cycle management is the confidentiality of transactions to hide valuable business information from competitors. To solve the combined problem of trust and confidentiality, we present a confidential licensing and tracking system which works on any publicly verifiable, token-based blockchain that supports tokens of different types representing licenses or attributes of parts. Together with the secure integration of a unique eID in each part, our system provides an efficient, immutable and authenticated transaction log scalable to thousands of transactions per second. With our confidential Token-Based License Management system (cTLM), large industries such as automotive or aviation can license and trace all parts confidentially.