BidSphere: A Secure Digital Auction and Management System

Abstract

E-commerce is growing rapidly, and online auctions have become a popular way to trade goods. Unique and rare items that were once auctioned in person can now be bid on remotely, letting buyers and sellers interact through a web platform. This paper presents BidSphere, a web-based online auction system (OAS) and management platform that supports user registration and login, product listing, auction creation, bid validation, automatic auction closing, and winner selection. Live bidding helps buyers respond quickly and improves their chances of winning, while helping sellers reach the best possible price. Participants also save the time and effort of attending an auction in person.

Introduction

Online auctions have become increasingly popular because they allow buyers and sellers to participate in bidding from different locations through digital platforms. However, security, privacy, fairness, and transparency remain major concerns. This research proposes BidSphere, a web-based online auction and management system designed to simplify auction operations while providing secure access, bid validation, and reliable winner selection.

1. Literature Survey

Previous research has explored several technologies to improve online auction security, including blockchain, smart contracts, encryption, digital signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, and cryptographic commitments. These approaches aim to protect bidder identities, preserve bid confidentiality, improve transparency, and ensure fairness.

However, existing systems often face three major limitations: complex architectures, scalability challenges, and insufficient large-scale practical evaluation. BidSphere addresses the basic functional requirements of online auctions using a conventional web application architecture, while considering advanced cryptographic and blockchain techniques as potential future enhancements.

2. Proposed System and Methodology

BidSphere supports three main user roles:

• Admin: Manages users, products, auctions, and auction results.

• Seller: Registers products, creates auctions, sets starting prices and auction durations, and manages auction details.

• Buyer: Browses available products, views auction information, and submits bids during active auctions.

The system includes user registration and authentication, role-based access control, product management, bid validation, automatic auction closing, highest-valid-bid identification, and winner announcement.

Before accepting a bid, the system checks whether it meets the defined bidding conditions. Once the auction closes, the highest valid bid is used to determine the winner according to the auction rules.

3. Security and Confidentiality

Security is a central component of BidSphere. Authentication verifies user identities, while role-based authorization restricts access to functions according to each user's responsibilities. These controls help prevent unauthorized access to administrative and auction-management operations.

The research also examines cryptographic approaches to bid confidentiality, including asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, hybrid RSA/AES encryption, fully homomorphic encryption, and zero-knowledge proofs. However, the paper distinguishes between the security features currently implemented and advanced mechanisms proposed for future development. BidSphere currently uses a conventional web application architecture rather than a blockchain-based system, so advanced privacy and decentralized verification capabilities should not be assumed to be implemented.

4. Results and Discussion

The study describes the system's functional structure and highlights the importance of authentication, access control, bid validation, and automated winner selection. Its role-based design separates administrative, seller, and buyer operations, supporting organized and controlled auction management.

The price recommendation service also uses category-related parameters, such as starting-price factors, reserve-price factors, and demand scores, to support pricing decisions.

Although the proposed system addresses essential online auction requirements, the paper does not establish large-scale performance results or demonstrate that advanced cryptographic protections have been implemented and tested.

Conclusion

This paper presented BidSphere, a secure digital online auction and management system designed to provide an organized platform for online auctions. The proposed system includes user authentication, product management, auction creation, online bidding, bid validation, automatic winner selection, and administrative management. It aims to simplify the online auction process by allowing sellers and buyers to interact with each other directly. Overall, BidSphere demonstrates how essential online auction operations can be integrated into a centralized web-based management platform. Future integration of blockchain-based verification, privacy-preserving bidding, advanced authentication, fraud detection, secure payment processing, and scalability improvements could turn the current system into a more secure, transparent, trustworthy, and large-scale online auction platform.

References

[1] Omar et al., “Implementing decentralized auctions using blockchain smart contracts,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 168, Art. no. 120786, 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120786. [2] A. Sarfaraz, R. K. Chakrabortty, and D. L. Essam, “A tree structure-based improved blockchain framework for a secure online bidding system,” Computers & Security, vol. 102, Art. no. 102147, 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.cose.2020.102147. [3] H. Li and W. Xue, “A blockchain-based sealed-bid e-auction scheme with smart contract and zero-knowledge proof,” Security and Communication Networks, vol. 2021, Art. no. 5523394, 2021, doi: 10.1155/2021/5523394. [4] Y. Zhang et al., “SBRAC: Blockchain-based sealed-bid auction with bidding price privacy and public verifiability,” Journal of Information Security and Applications, vol. 65, Art. no. 103082, 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.jisa.2021.103082. [5] M. Zhang, M. Yang, and G. Shen, “SSBAS-FA: A secure sealed-bid e-auction scheme with fair arbitration based on time-released blockchain,” Journal of Systems Architecture, vol. 129, Art. no. 102619, 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.sysarc.2022.102619. [6] H.-T. Liaw, W.-S. Juang, and C.-K. Lin, “An electronic online bidding auction protocol with both security and efficiency,” Applied Mathematics and Computation, vol. 174, no. 2, pp. 1487–1497, 2006, doi: 10.1016/j.amc.2005.06.016. [7] “A state-of-the-art approach for securing online auction system,” in Proc. 2022 6th Int. Conf. Electronics, Communication and Aerospace Technology (ICECA), 2022, doi: 10.1109/ICECA55336.2022.10009518. [8] Kumbhakar et al., “Secure online e-auction system using blockchain technology,” in Proc. 2023 Int. Conf. Sustainable Computing and Smart Systems (ICSCSS), 2023, doi: 10.1109/ICSCSS57650.2023.10169698. [9] A. K. Vangujar, A. Umrani, J. J. Chin, and P. Palmieri, “Secure e-auctions: A blockchain-based cluster consensus identity-based identification scheme,” in Proc. 2024 6th Int. Conf. Blockchain Computing and Applications (BCCA), 2025, pp. 189–197, doi: 10.1109/BCCA62388.2024.10844472. [10] S. Swain and V. Chouhan, “A smart contract solution for transparent auctions on permissioned blockchain platform,” Computers and Electrical Engineering, vol. 121, Art. no. 109859, 2025, doi: 10.1016/j.compeleceng.2024.109859.

Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Mrs. Reena Dewangan, Harshal Vijaywar, Prachi Dhote, Aniket Balbudhe, Anjali Rewatkar , Vedant Wandhare , Samiksha Mohitkar. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.