Paper 2024/813
How to Redact the Bitcoin Backbone Protocol
Abstract
We explain how to extend the Bitcoin backbone model of Garay et al. (Eurocrypt, 2015) to accommodate for redactable blockchains. Our extension captures fluid blockchain-based databases (with mutability requirements) and compliance with existing legislation, such as the GDPR right to be forgotten, or the need to erase offending data from nodes’ databases that would otherwise provoke legal shutdowns. Our redactable backbone protocol retains the essential properties of blockchains. Leveraging zero-knowledge proofs, old data can be erased without requiring trusted third parties or heuristics about past chain validation. Our solution can be implemented on Bitcoin immediately without hard-forks, and it is scalable. It allows the redaction of data from UTXOs or unconfirmed transactions that have not yet flooded the network, while guaranteeing invariance of the Bitcoin state. Thus, offending data does not need to persist in the system, not even temporarily.
Note: This version acknowledges and compares against an existing work that it was missing in the conference version.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Category
- Cryptographic protocols
- Publication info
- Published elsewhere. Minor revision. IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency 2024
- Keywords
- Redactabkle blockchainsNIZKs
- Contact author(s)
-
mehmet kiraz @ dmu ac uk
e larraia @ nchain com
o vaughan @ nchain com - History
- 2024-05-28: revised
- 2024-05-24: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2024/813
- License
-
CC BY-NC
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2024/813,
author = {Mehmet Sabir Kiraz and Enrique Larraia and Owen Vaughan},
title = {How to Redact the Bitcoin Backbone Protocol},
howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2024/813},
year = {2024},
note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/813}},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/813}
}
