Navigating the Maze: Exploring Blockchain Privacy and Its Information Retrieval

Abstract

Blockchain networks provide a reliable and secure mode of communication due to their decentralized and distributed nature. The emergence of amalgamated blockchain-based internet-of-things (IoT) systems has generated a huge amount of data to be online. Though blockchains show potential for ensuring transparency, traceability, and immutable records, the privacy of online data in blockchains becomes a question. The privacy of blockchain transactions is at stake as various privacy breaching methods are used by attackers such as linking the transactions, deanonymization, etc. However, the benefits of blockchain make the technology a dominator in the present and future technological paradigms. The other side of the coin deals with privacy information retrieval (PIR), which is necessary to retrieve private information from servers without much revealing. However, the conjunction of blockchain privacy and PIR is very critical and an important aspect of blockchain solutions. In this present survey, we pioneer in analyzing the privacy factors of existing blockchain solutions. We discuss the privacy parameters and important privacy enhancement techniques for blockchains comprehensively. We show the applicability of privacy in various domains including e-commerce, supply chain, healthcare, and IoT. We also discuss PIR-related issues and solutions in the existing literature. We highlight open research problems and discuss the benefits of collaborating with PIR and blockchain systems to improve privacy in blockchains. Our survey is beneficial for academia and industries to be aware of the present status of privacy solutions in blockchains and to address the identified loopholes to make the systems better.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• information
• privacy
• retrieval
• security
• survey