Blockchain Signatures to Ensure Information Integrity and Non-Repudiation in the Digital Era: A comprehensive study

2025-10-26

AI Summary

Blockchain systems must simultaneously ensure data integrity and non-repudiation; however, existing digital signature schemes face multiple challenges in decentralized settings—including inefficient aggregation, malleability vulnerabilities, limited native support for multi-signature protocols, and lack of post-quantum security. This paper systematically compares mainstream signature schemes—ECDSA, BLS, and threshold signatures—through rigorous cryptographic analysis, evaluating their underlying security assumptions, computational overhead for signing and verification, and practical suitability for consensus mechanisms and smart contract execution. Our key contribution is a novel, scenario-driven signature selection framework tailored to distinct on-chain use cases: high-throughput payments, auditable governance, and post-quantum migration. The framework explicitly characterizes trade-offs among performance, security guarantees, and scalability, and provides concrete implementation optimizations and evolutionary pathways toward quantum-resilient, efficient, and interoperable blockchain authentication.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Scalability, Parallel & Distributed Systems
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Blockchains and distributed ledgers
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Economic aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrencies
• Responsible Web: Consent frameworks and practices on the web

Abstract

Blockchain systems rely on decentralized ledgers and strong security guarantees. A key requirement is non-repudiation, which prevents denial of transaction authorship and supports integrity of recorded data. This work surveys digital signature schemes used in blockchain platforms and analyzes how they deliver non-repudiation and contribute to overall system security. We examine representative scheme families and their cryptographic foundations, security assumptions, and properties relevant to deployment, including unforgeability, resistance to malleability, support for aggregation and multisignature or threshold settings, key and signature sizes, and verification cost. Using these criteria, we compare the suitability of different designs for consensus protocols, smart contract constraints, and resource limits. We highlight practical tradeoffs that affect throughput, storage, scalability, and attack surfaces, and summarize benefits and limitations of each scheme in blockchain contexts. The study underscores that carefully chosen digital signatures are central to achieving non-repudiation and preserving information integrity, and it outlines implementation considerations and open directions such as interoperability and post-quantum readiness.

Problem

• Surveying digital signature schemes for blockchain non-repudiation
• Analyzing cryptographic properties and security assumptions of schemes
• Comparing suitability for consensus, scalability, and attack resistance

Innovation

• Blockchain signatures ensure non-repudiation and data integrity
• Survey analyzes cryptographic schemes for security and scalability
• Compares signature designs for consensus protocols and efficiency