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Second USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce
Agora: A Minimal Distributed Protocol for Electronic Commerce
Eran Gabber and Abraham Silberschatz
Bell Laboratories
Abstract
Agora is a Web protocol for electronic commerce, which is intended to
support high-volume of transactions each with low incurred cost.
Agora has the following novel properties:
- Minimal. The incurred cost of Agora transactions is
close to free Web browsing, where cost is determined by the number of
messages.
- Distributed. Agora is fully distributed. Merchants can
authenticate customers without access to a central
authority. Customers with valid accounts can purchase from any
merchant without any preparations (such as prior registration at the
merchant or at a broker).
- On-line arbitration. An on-line arbiter can settle
certain customer/merchant disputes.
- Fraud control. Agora can limit the degree of fraud to a
pre-determined (low) level.
Agora is authenticated, secure and can not be repudiated. It can use
regular (insecure) communication channels.
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