Agora A Minimal Distributed Protocol for Electronic Commerce

Agora is a Web protocol for electronic commerce which is intended to support high volume of trans actions each with low incurred cost Agora has the following novel properties Minimal The incurred cost of Agora transac tions is close to free Web browsing where cost is determined by the number of messages Distributed Agora is fully distributed Mer chants can authenticate customers without ac cess to a central authority Customers with valid accounts can purchase from any merchant without any preparations such as prior regis tration at the merchant or at a broker On line arbitration An on line arbiter can set tle 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 repu diated It can use regular insecure communication channels