Fine-Grained and Controlled Rewriting in Blockchains: Chameleon-Hashing Gone Attribute-Based

Abstract

Blockchain technologies recently received a considerable amount of attention. While the initial focus was mainly on the use of blockchains in the context of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, application scenarios now go far beyond this. Most blockchains have the property that once some object, e.g., a block or a transaction, has been registered to be included into the blockchain, it is persisted and there are no means to modify it again. While this is an essential feature of most blockchain scenarios, it is still often desirable-at times it may be even legally required-to allow for breaking this immutability in a controlled way.