Blockchain-assisted revocable capability credential authentication for cross-domain UAVs

Cross-domain UAV operations require secure and privacy-preserving authentication across multiple administrative domains. However, existing schemes still suffer from centralized authorization, exposure of mission attributes, insufficient revocation consistency, and limited auditability. To address these issues, this paper proposes a blockchain-assisted revocable capability credential authentication protocol for cross-domain UAV edge networks. The main innovation is to shift cross-domain UAV authentication from identity- or location-centric verification to revocation-aware lifecycle verification of mission capabilities. In the proposed framework, a Domain Authority committee jointly issues blinded capability credentials through distributed key generation and threshold BLS signatures. UAVs then prove mission-policy compliance using Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs without revealing sensitive capability attributes. Meanwhile, the blockchain maintains credential active states, revocation versions, and audit-root evidence for cross-domain consistency and accountability. A ticket-based AuthResume mechanism is further designed to reduce repeated authentication overhead while preventing outdated tickets from bypassing revocation. Formal security analysis, BAN logic, and Scyther verification show that the protocol supports credential unforgeability, revocation enforcement, auditability, mutual authentication, freshness, and session synchronization. Solidity smart contracts were deployed on the Sepolia testnet, and experimental results demonstrate acceptable FullAuth overhead and lightweight repeated access through AuthResume.