Privacy of Data

[ghiliweld]

Privacy on the blockchain is difficult. Because everything is open for inspection, hiding data is never truly possible. However, a social platform where there is no privacy for users is far from ideal.

So how do we go about ensuring privacy? How can we make it very difficult, if not impossible, for unauthorized users to read data on other users?

This is what I'll be tackling with this MIP.

STILL A WIP, check back in a few weeks.

[ghiliweld]

The first issue that needs to be tackled first is what data can be accessible to everyone and what needs to be private or at least have permissible access.

I propose that follower information such as lists of followers per profile and lists of mutual follows per profile be public, while info like profile metadata be private with reading access being given by the profile owner.

Metadata can be a JSON file saved to IPFS with the hash being saved on the blockchain. The function to view said hash can only be called by the owner of the profile. Of course, one could search through tx history or event logs to find the hash by bypassing the rules of the contract which is the one major flaw in this idea but I'm looking into alternatives for this.

[moskalyk]

Not a decentralized solution, but an immediate solution for managing on chain secrets, would be to store off-chain salts that hash data per mimo profile.

[ghiliweld]

@moskalyk Yeah perhaps something like that would work. I'll look into it.