Abstract
A method for making word-of-mouth posts verifiable without revealing buyer identity. A purchase is recorded on a blockchain as a hiding commitment that does not identify the buyer. When the buyer chooses to post about the purchase on social media, a separate per-purchase binding record is written that contains the buyer's public account handle and, in plaintext, an operator-issued referral ID. The referral ID is generated from random bytes and exists only inside the buyer's personal connector (token) URL, which is issued automatically upon payment confirmation. A third party can therefore compare the referral URL in a post against the on-chain binding by simple string comparison, without trusting the operator, and detect copied posts with substituted referral links. Bindings are one per purchase and never reused, so repeat purchases become publicly visible while buyers who stay silent remain unlinked. Also disclosed: self-referral exclusion, independent verification of registered post URLs, refusal to ghostwrite posts (facts and prohibitions only), and a photo capture flow that stamps hash, time, province and a GPS hiding commitment. Variants include other blockchains, other social networks, commitment-based referral IDs, proof of travel presence, zero-knowledge threshold proofs over bookings, AI agents as referrers, and automatic versus claim-triggered binding.
Originally published 2026-09-18 as ECOSUS-TR-2026-016 at https://gyotak-tr.pages.dev/tr-2026-016/ ; archived at https://perma.cc/5B7R-F7FC and the Internet Archive (2026-09-18 13:10 UTC). Revised 2026-09-19.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Ogura, Takuya, "Referral-Bound Purchase Claims: Binding an Operator-Issued Referral ID to an Anonymous On-Chain Purchase Commitment for Verifiable Word-of-Mouth", Technical Disclosure Commons, ()
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/11796