Moving Smart Contracts -- A Privacy Preserving Method for Off-Chain Data Trust

TL;DR

This paper introduces Moving Smart Contracts, a privacy-preserving method enabling trusted off-chain data access and verification without exposing sensitive data on the blockchain.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach that allows local data to remain private while trusted nodes execute smart contracts, reducing data exposure and storage on the blockchain.

Findings

Enables privacy-preserving data verification on blockchain

Reduces data storage requirements on the blockchain

Maintains trust and integrity of off-chain data

Abstract

Blockchains provide environments where parties can interact transparently and securely peer-to-peer without needing a trusted third party. Parties can trust the integrity and correctness of transactions and the verifiable execution of binary code on the blockchain (smart contracts) inside the system. Including information from outside of the blockchain remains challenging. A challenge is data privacy. In a public system, shared data becomes public and, coming from a single source, often lacks credibility. A private system gives the parties control over their data and sources but trades in positive aspects as transparency. Often, not the data itself is the most critical information but the result of a computation performed on it. An example is research data certification. To keep data private but still prove data provenance, researchers can store a hash value of that data on the blockchain. This hash value is either calculated locally on private data without the chance for validation or is calculated on the blockchain, meaning that data must be published and stored on the blockchain -- a problem of the overall data amount stored on and distributed with the ledger. A system we called moving smart contracts bypasses this problem: Data remain local, but trusted nodes can access them and execute trusted smart contract code stored on the blockchain. This method avoids the system-wide distribution of research data and makes it accessible and verifiable with trusted software.