Virtual Private Blockchains for GDPR: Cheap Private Blockchains out of Public Ones

Pennino, Diego; Pizzonia, Maurizio

Virtual Private Blockchains for GDPR: Cheap Private Blockchains out of Public Ones

Author(s)

Pennino, Diego

Pizzonia, Maurizio

Date Issued

2024

Type

conferenceObject

Volume

3791

Journal

CEUR WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

Abstract

Compliance with privacy regulations, like the European GDPR, poses a big pressure toward the adoption of private blockchain with respect to solutions based on public blockchains. However, there are cases in which adopting a private blockchain is hardly viable for other reasons, leading to situations that might result in a big obstacle for blockchain adoption of whatever kind. In this paper, we describe an approach to make a virtual private blockchain on top of a regular public blockchain, obtaining the security of the consensus algorithm of the latter while keeping the privacy features of a private blockchain. Our approach leverages cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs and authenticated data structures to allow the underlying public blockchain to verify that transactions of the VPBC conform to its specific consensus rules, without decrypting the transaction itself.

Handle

http://hdl.handle.net/2067/52083

Conference(s)

6th Distributed Ledger Technology Workshop, DLT 2024