CovidChain: An Anonymity Preserving Blockchain Based Framework for Protection Against Covid-19

ABSTRACT

In the past year the entire world has faced incredible health and economic challenges due to the life-threatening novel Coronavirus Disease – 2019 (COVID-19) and is an ongoing crisis. In this situation, the way forward seems to be a balanced approach – where, infected/exposed people are strictly quarantined and recovered/unexposed people are allowed to carry on with their day-to-day business activities. However, appropriate social/physical distancing norms will have to be strictly followed till the pandemic is completely over. Therefore, mechanisms are required that will assist people in following the social and physical distancing norms in public places. In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving blockchain-based framework that allows people, through use of their smartphones and other communication devices, to protect themselves from infections as they go about their day-to-day activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• coronavirus
• contact tracing
• blockchain
• security
• privacy
• anonymity