Event Recap: DIBDET — Personal Data on the Blockchain?
Our first virtual event talked about the handling of personal information on a blockchain.
When the DIBDET first started its legal-tech workshops in 2019, it was intended to be a local meet up where the community could gather to discuss different topics that affected both the law and technology industry. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made in-person meetups unfeasible, meaning that DIBDET returned with its first virtual event.
It was great to see such a diverse number of individuals from all over the globe joining to discuss the question of “Personal Data on the Blockchain?”. The event started with some small ice breakers and interaction with the attendees. The panel included:
Nicolas Busch — in-house lawyer of evan.network
Stefan Dejanovic, IT Consultant at OCTA IT
The host of the event was Nathan Vandy, Legal Counsel, Blockchain HELIX.
DIBDET — Digital Identity, Big Data and Emerging Technology
Firstly, explaining what DIBDET meant and represented before asking how well the attendees knew blockchain on a scale of 0–10. It was great to see such a mixed group of attendees with some of them not having heard of blockchain at all and others seasoned professionals. The presenters had taken this into consideration and made sure that they explained blockchain technology on a high level including use cases and on a technical level.
An interesting analogy was introduced by the host, Nathan Vandy who explained that the features in a blockchain ledger is similar to a ledger created from Excel Online or Google Sheets:
“Imagine a database that could be trusted by anyone and everyone in the world, that could record transactions securely and in real-time, that could be easily shared and accessed just like Google Sheets.”
Personal data on a blockchain?
Afterwards, the discussion was on: how could we delete personal data that was placed onto a blockchain. The host broke down the two conflicting issues: the legal right for anyone in the world to rectify or delete their personal data and the immutability of blockchain technology as its innate security feature.
Firstly, Nicolas Busch, in-house lawyer of evan.network, explained how their public permissioned blockchain deals with users’ data protection rights. Using a combination of legal documents and technical innovations, evan network had found a way to ensure that personal data could actually be deleted from a blockchain — even if it meant that they had to fork the blockchain (delete the older entries).
An attendee was interested in the technical solution of how evan.network combined data storage on and off the blockchain. Nicolas Busch followed with the explanation:
“Since Blockchains aren‘t very good at storing large amounts of data, with introduction to smart contracts it is possible to combine an external decentralized storage, the IPFS (Interplanetary File System), with a Blockchain. Files in the IPFS are encrypted, hashed and the hash is stored on the Blockchain. This makes deletion of the storage possible, since the owner of data can remove it from the IPFS and there will remain only a hash on the Blockchain pointing into nowhere.”
These solutions would maintain the efficiencies of using blockchain as a source of truth whilst allowing users to be able to rectify and/or delete their personal data.
Stefan Dejanovic, IT Consultant at OCTA IT, followed by explaining his unique solution to making custom blockchain environments for companies that want to increase and ensure the data protection rights of their users.
Rather than storing the personal data off-chain, he instead focused on encrypting the personal data before storing it on the blockchain. The access to the personal data was only allowed when the signatures of the user and the company were checked and then the shared key was given to the company. This innovative solution was supported through the use of biometric security in order to make sure that the private key of the user was unique to the individual and could never be lost.
It was a great event with engagement from the attendees and future collaborations developed too. We would like to thank all participants for not only attending our first virtual event but for actively participating. An additional thanks goes to the panelists who took their time to make the presentations and also engage with the attendees.
If you have an important topic to discuss and want to be involved in our legal-tech workshop in the future, feel free to reach out. We are looking forward to more DIBDET events in the future. Virtual or in-person.
