Privacy-awareness in Blockchain-based PKI

Conventional public key infrastructure (PKI) designs are not optimal and contain security flaws; there is much work underway in improving PKI. The properties given by the Bitcoin blockchain and its derivatives are a natural solution to some of the problems with PKI in particular, certificate transparency and elimination of single points of failure. Recently-proposed blockchain PKI designs are built as public ledgers linking identity with public key, giving no provision of privacy. We consider the suitability of a blockchain-based PKI for contexts in which PKI is required, but in which linking of identity with public key is undesirable; specifically, we show that blockchain can be used to construct a privacy-aware PKI while simultaneously eliminating some of the problems encountered in conventional PKI.