• Challenges in making blockchain privacy compliant for the digital world: some measures

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      https://www.ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/sadh/047/0168

    • Keywords

       

      Privacy; blockchain; zero knowledge proof; ring signature; multiparty computation; mixing; homomorphic encryption; quantum computing; PET.

    • Abstract

       

      Due to the pandemic, most of the personal transactions relating to finance, commerce and healthcare services have gone online making privacy preservation a critical requirement. Consequently, privacy has been made a critical parameter in Data Protection Regulations leading to the search for such a privacy compliant system which is also resilient to attacks. A detailed analysis of the Blockchain technology, which is becoming popular for secure applications in the finance sector, indicates that there are several challenges relating to user identity, transaction linkability, crypto-keys management, data privacy, usability, interoperability, and post- quantum compliance of privacy regulations which need to be resolved before its widespread adoption. Being a decentralised system, there is a need to analyse the vulnerability to attacks of each layer in theBlockchain architecture. This paper discusses the development flow of some of the privacy enhancement mechanisms like ZKPs, SMPC, Ring signatures, Mixing, Homomorphic Encryption and quantum resilient computing, bringing out their features and lacunae. There is a detailed discussion of the privacy mechanisms adopted by blockchain platforms like ZCash, Zerocoin, Hyperledger, Wanchain, Coin Party, Monero, Cryptomate, MixCoin, Coinshuffle, PICNIC and New Hope. Every platform has some limitation or the other and it isessential that researchers come out with mitigation steps for the existing mechanisms and come up with improved new Privacy Enhancement Techniques. One such architecture using PET has been proposed.

    • Author Affiliations

       

      SMITA BANSOD1 LATA RAGHA2

      1. Department of Information Technology, Faculty, Shah & Anchor Engineering College, Research Scholar, Terna Engineering College, Mumbai University, Mumbai, India
      2. Department of Computer Engineering, Father Conceicao Rodrigues Institute of Technology, Vashi, Mumbai, India
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