Data protection governance framework: A silver bullet for blockchain-enabled applications

Abstract

Blockchain technology is taking centre stage in major industries, ushering in a new era of decentralisation and digitalisation. While blockchain has garnered widespread traction in various sectors, there remain many technological, operational, societal, and legal challenges in deploying blockchain, mainly attributable to its sheer novelty. With ensuing ruminations about data protection concerns and given the real threats posed by the increasing usage of blockchain, scholars have examined these underlying challenges faced by blockchain users and regulators globally. Trust-building issues, such as data protection breaches, warrant our attention due to the negative consequences that may manifest and concretise in any measurable manner, triggering fragmentation of blockchain-based applications and socio-technical assemblages. This paper proposes eight data protection indicators (DPIs) to assess the maturity levels of countries in addressing data protection challenges in the blockchain landscape. The DPIs can contribute to developing institutional and governance frameworks to spur the global diffusion of hard and soft law instruments and establish broader safeguards of blockchain users’ data.