Auctioneer accountability

  The bid submissions can be signed (i.e. counter-signed) by the receiving auctioneers and the signature made available to the submitting bidder. Then, if the selling price is published, any bidder who bid higher than the selling price can prove his superior bid. The same techniques described in section 4.6.2 for bidder accountability could be used to check that the bid is higher than the selling price without directly revealing the bid. In this case the two known bids for the simplified auction should be and .

In this manner a bidder can prove a superior bid even if all auctioneers were corrupted (assuming that the bid was accepted in the first place). This method does not by itself protect against a denial-of-service attack by a large coalition (>t) of corrupt auctioneers unless they can be forced to accept and acknowledge a bid by some third party.