单词本：endorse

昨天看了 Xu Lei, et. al. (Xu et al. 2020) 写的一篇论文，介绍如何使用 FPGA 作为 TEE，构建工业物联网区块链系统的方案，因为用的是联盟区块链，所以他们写道：a device/server can participate the system only if it has a private key with corresponding public key endorsed by all administrators.

这个 endorse 是背书、认可、赞同的意思。这里是指设备服务节点的非对称密钥的公钥被管理员认可了，才能参与区块链网络连接。

至于背书、认可的过程，作者写道：All administrators verify the signature \(\sigma_{c_{s}}\) using the public key \(pk^D_{BSP}\), which they obtained directly from the device D. Then they endorse the public key \(pk^D_{BS}\) by signing it using their private keys and the multisignature scheme, and D can use \(sk^D_{BS}\) for interaction with other components of the system for authentication and other attestation purposes.

所有区块链节点管理员签名认可了设备的公钥之后，参能与其他节点交互通信。这种多签名机制，就能避免了单一信任问题：To guarantee the genuineness of the corresponding public key, administrators physically obtain public keys from devices and then endorse them using a multi-signature scheme.

Lee et. al. 也写过一篇利用区块链管理物联网的文章 (Lee et al. 2021)，其中也提到了区块链背书机制：In order to reduce both latency and traffic in IIoT blockchain network, we propose an endorsement policy that allows orderer to collect the endorsed responses from various endorsers instead of a client which transmits transaction proposals only.

这里 endorsement 是背书的名词，endorser 是背书人。

其实前缀 en- 有 put on，装上，穿上的意思。而 dorse 则来自拉丁语 dossum，即后背的意思。连在一起，相当于是在背面装上、写上点东西，表示认可。最早的意思，是指在纸质文档的背面签名确认。那么，在数字化时代，就是对实体的公钥进行签名认可。

与 dossum 相关的还有 dorsal，背部的、后背的。

References