A privacy-preserving framework for blockchain-based multi-level marketing

Abstract

The multi-level marketing (MLM) model allows customers to have numerous sub-groups and be rewarded based on subgroups’ activities. The ever-increasing large-scale transactions tempt individuals, hackers, and company owners, to commit fraud. However, no MLM-based market has been introduced that can provide privacy protection and conditional privacy. Transparency and immutability can help prevent fraud in these markets. Blockchain technology is a distributed database that supports the two mentioned features. This study presents a blockchain-based framework for MLM-based markets called “blockchain-based multi-level marketing” (BB-MLM). This framework is designed to allow registered users (i) to have conditional privacy, (ii) purchase anonymously, (iii) have untraceable accounts, and (iv) update their private information locally. Despite the privacy mentioned earlier, policies, and regulatory policies, including Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML), are supported in the BB-MLM framework.