This paper presents a new blind image watermarking scheme using binary decimal sequence (d-sequence) and lifting wavelet transform (LWT) for copyright protection. The core idea is to produce a d- sequence based on random number generator (RNG) algorithm and secret keys. A reference set is then generated using the d-sequence for embedding purpose. For embedding, the host image is decomposed into different frequency bands using the LWT and watermark bits are then embedded in selected band, considering the reference set. The extensive experimental results, comparative and security analysis demonstrate the better robustness of the proposed scheme against different kind of attacks. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.