The author proposes an interesting general technique for granting privacy in auctions: the protocol yields only the winner(s) and the final price, and only to the winners themselves. The author develops the algorithm for (M+1)st price auctions, where a number M of identical objects are being auctioned, and the M winners pay the price the (M+1)st bidder offered.

The protocol seeks to eliminate the need for a trusted party, such as an auction site, to manage the blind auction. It is replaced with a more relaxed security assumption of a designated agent (namely, the seller) who must not disengage from the protocol or reveal information prematurely. Since these behaviors may cause bidders to leave the auction early, but not lose privacy, it is in the auctioneer’s interest to play fairly.

The algorithm is theoretically interesting, but has some practical limitations: first, the bidders have a fixed set of prices they can offer, and, second, the amount of data exchanged during the protocol is high, making it unusable (for example, for financial interactions).