The NFT Transition for Certificates of Mobile Network

Abstract

Fifth-generation (5G) systems favor elasticity, disaggregation, and zero-trust operations, yet certificate management for TLS/mTLS across Open RAN and the 5G Service-Based Architecture (SBA) still relies on CA-centric PKI with X.509, creating trust concentration and revocation latency. We present NFT-Cert-MN, an NFT-backed certificate framework that remains wire-compatible with TLS/mTLS while decentralizing issuance and lifecycle control via smart contracts. Certificates are represented as non-transferable, account-bound NFTs bound to an NF/operator identity, and lifecycle-control keys are separated from TLS authentication keys. A Trusted Authority (TA) bootstraps identity and signs certificate metadata; on-chain policies govern minting, renewal, suspension, revocation, and key rotation via burn-and-reissue. We articulate three deployment profiles (public mainnet/L2, permissioned consortium, and private operator/regulator) and show how site-local full-node gateways meet telecom latency and availability constraints. For TLS 1.3, we state required properties (entity authentication, channel security, and revocation freshness) and argue that standard TLS guarantees are preserved under standard cryptographic and ledger-finality assumptions when the peer’s TLS public key and token status are validated from a finalized ledger view. Experiments show a prototype mint cost of 488,501 gas (~$0.0001–$4.21) and mTLS authentication workload reductions of 33–50% in signature verifications, with no online OCSP round trips when status is read locally.