Privacy Enhancement Scheme (PES) in a Blockchain-Edge Computing Environment

Abstract

With the public key being the parameter users are mostly addressed by on blockchain network, an intruder can connect transactional patterns to the public key and make a probable revelation of the identity of the user. Due to the diversity in approaches in achieving privacy, integrating the principle of transparency in any blockchain - edge computing platform will present some structural security challenges. Thus, an attempt should be made to achieve confidentiality whilst not eliminating a key principle of blockchain - transparency. Based on elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC), we present a privacy-aware scheme that preserves the privacy details of the user in a blockchain-edge computing environment based on a combination of randomly generated public keys and digital signatures. The resilience and practicality of our scheme were tested on AVISPA and NS2 respectively. The results indicated our scheme was robust against attacks, efficient and low on computation resources of edge devices.

Keywords

• Privacy
• public key
• blockchain
• location context
• edge computing paradigm