Redact4Trace: A solution for auditing the data and tracing the users in the redactable blockchain

Abstract

With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation and the advent of the Blockchain 3.0 era, redactable blockchain have become a popular area of research. However, auditing harmful data on redactable blockchain has become an urgent problem to be solved to promote redactable blockchain. Moreover, tracing the identity of users who submit harmful data is a concerning problem that urgently needs to be solved. To address these issues, we propose Redact4Trace, a solution for tracing and auditing data in redactable blockchains. In Redact4Trace, transactions are the unit for minor data editing and redaction, ensuring fine-grained data editing and access. We have designed a data auditing scheme based on the unique characteristics of redactable blockchains. This scheme, which uses a chameleon hash, depends only on the transaction’s hash and effectively protects user privacy. We have also designed an identity tracing scheme based on bilinear maps. Users must use the bilinear mapping to compute address information and store it in the transaction for identity tracing. If the identity information in the transaction is altered, our backup scheme based on the discrete logarithm problem can still trace the user’s identity effectively. Security analyses and experimental results confirm that Redact4Trace is both secure and efficient.