BAAR: A framework for blockchain-based anonymous and revocable user authentication scheme
Blockchain-based systems increasingly require authentication mechanisms that simultaneously preserve user privacy, support accountability, and enable efficient credential revocation. However, most existing anonymous authentication schemes rely on pairing-based cryptography which introduce high computational overhead and limit deploy ability on widely adopted blockchain platforms such as Ethereum. This paper presents BAAR, a Blockchain-based Anonymous and Revocable authentication framework designed entirely within the discrete logarithm setting over the secp256k1 elliptic curve. BAAR integrates Pedersen vector commitments, Schnorr-based zero-knowledge proofs, and a Merkle-tree-based dynamic accumulator to support anonymous and unlinkable authentication with selective attribute disclosure and public, auditable revocation. Authentication and proof verification are performed off-chain, while the blockchain maintains only a compact revocation state, significantly reducing on-chain computation and gas costs. A formal security analysis demonstrates unforgeability, unlinkability, attribute privacy, and revocation soundness under standard cryptographic assumptions in the random oracle model. A prototype implementation on Ethereum confirms that BAAR achieves low gas consumption, logarithmic-time revocation, and scalable performance with respect to both the number of users and attributes. These results indicate that BAAR provides a practical balance between strong privacy guarantees and deploy ability, making it suitable for real-world blockchain-based identity and access-control systems.
Authors
- Sheeraz Akram (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2321-3845)
- Muhammad Ahmed (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-0812)
- Furkh Zeshan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2960-9632)
- Adnan Ahmad (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2488-8043)
Institutions
- COMSATS University Islamabad (PK)
- Imam Mohammad ibn Saud Islamic University (SA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PLoS ONE
- Published
- 2026-03-31
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0343696
- Primary Topic
- Cryptography and Data Security
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00