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ABSTRACTExchange of information through the web took place inside a trusted environment and thus user privacy was assured by default. Nowadays, ensuring user privacy is becoming one of the most desirable features of new technology, and Blockchain is not an exception. The Blockchain is a decentralized technology, open, and public platform where all transactions are stored and viewed from nodes, an approach known as “Web of Trust.” Although these transactions tend to be anonymous but in the case of the banking sector, user privacy requires special attention. In centralized systems, the implementation of privacy is no longer a challenge, using a hierarchical approach such as Public Key Infrastructure. This paper presents a broad landscape and state of art of user transaction privacy in Blockchain technology using the Web of Trust approach. Furthermore, we present a novel approach using the Public Key Infrastructure for assuring user privacy adding an optionally encrypted field in blocks in transactions. We have used Bithomp, as a free and open-source tool with the Testnet platform, and Ripple as the best known in the implementation of the payment system to implement the proposed approach. The paper concludes with the strengths and limitations of the proposed approach.

Digitalisation of public services has already changed the way how we interact with government. The electronic signature, based on public key cryptography, has strengthened the trust towards this transformation. With the recent appearance of the electronic seal, this digital transformation is complete. The new European Union regulation for electronic identification, authentication and trust services (eIDAS) has repealed the old directive and provides a regulatory environment. In the meantime, a novel technology based on cryptography rose as an alternative to fulfil these objectives - the blockchain. This paper, analyses the properties of the electronic seal, based on eIDAS regulation, with and without blockchain technology. The developed application uses local X.509 digital certificates and the multichain platform for the creation and deployment of private blockchains. At the end of the paper, an overview of this comparison is provided, using different documents, pointing out the pros and cons of each technology.