Redactable Blockchain: Comprehensive Review, Mechanisms, Challenges, Open Issues and Future Research Directions

Abstract

The continuous advancements of blockchain applications impose constant improvements on their technical features. Particularly immutability, a highly secure blockchain attribute forbidding unauthorized or illicit data editing or deletion, which functions as crucial blockchain security. Nonetheless, the security function is currently being challenged due to improper data stored, such as child pornography, copyright violation, and lately the enaction of the “Right to be Forgotten (RtbF)” principle disseminated by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), where it requires blockchain data to be redacted to suit current applications’ urgent demands, and even compliance with the regulation is a challenge and an unfeasible practice for various blockchain technology providers owing to the immutability characteristic. To overcome this challenge, mutable blockchain is highly demanded to solve previously mentioned issues, where controlled and supervised amendments to certain content within constrained privileges granted are suggested by several researchers through numerous blockchain redaction mechanisms using chameleon and non-chameleon hashing function approaches, and methods were proposed to achieve reasonable policies while ensuring high blockchain security levels. Accordingly, the current study seeks to thoroughly define redaction implementation challenges and security properties criteria. The analysis performed has mapped these criteria with chameleon-based research methodologies, technical approaches, and the latest cryptographic techniques implemented to resolve the challenge posed by the policy in which comparisons paved current open issues, leading to shaping future research directions in the scoped field.