Patent ID: 7340058

Claim:
A method for performing secure information processing operations utilizing a plurality of processing devices, the method comprising the steps of: performing a setup procedure to permit interactions of a designated type to be carried out between a first participant associated with at least a first one of the processing devices and a second participant associated with at least a second one of the processing devices; initiating in the first processing device a particular interaction with the second participant, by sending designated initiation information to the second processing device associated with the second participant, the particular interaction being configured based at least in part on one or more results of the setup procedure; receiving as part of the interaction response information from the second processing device associated with the second participant; and sending as part of the interaction additional information from the first processing device to the second processing device based at least in part on the received response information; wherein the interaction is configured such that the information exchanged between the first and second processing devices can be used to determine rights of the first and second participants in a publicly verifiable manner, the rights being based upon particular results of the interaction; wherein the interaction comprises a number of consecutive rounds of one or more decisions by each of the first participant and the second participant; wherein the interaction is characterized by a first free structure associated with the first participant and a second free structure associated with the second participant, each of the tree structures comprising a plurality of nodes, each of at least a subset of the nodes comprising a block of data that determines randomness contributed to a corresponding round of the interaction by the corresponding participant, wherein associated with each of at least a subset of the nodes are decision preimage values that encode possible decisions to be made in the interaction.