A Novel Construction of Re-initializable Multi-Hash Chains

As a cryptography algorithm that can provide non-repudiability, hash chains are widely used in electronic micropayment schemes because of its efficiency. In order to further improve efficiency, multiple hash chains can be simultaneously used to represent different denominations in micropayment. Because of the limitation that hash chain has a limited length, system design has to reduce the overhead when hash chains are re-initialized. A efficient one-time-signature-based construction is proposed which can simultaneously re-initialize multiple hash chains and its intrinsic non-repudiability and flexibility of configuration in re-initialization are analyzed. The application of the construction in multi-denomination micropayment is illustrated. The proposed construction can improve the efficiency of systems with multiple hash chains.