Blockchain and the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (PDPA) in Malaysia

Blockchain is a time stamped ledger that is used to keep immutable records. This technology has gained immense popularity due to the use of its decentralized architecture in cryptocurrency platforms. Blockchain has been increasingly adopted in other sectors due to its ability to ensure data integrity. The increasing use of blockchain by the public has made it become a subject to data privacy laws. Based on the study conducted by other researchers, there are features of blockchain that conflict with certain elements in data privacy laws. The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which becomes a model for data privacy act of many other countries, has been identified to be incompatible with blockchain. One of the research works in the area of blockchain is to figure out how blockchain can be made to comply with such privacy laws. In Malaysia, blockchain is still relatively new and a study needs to be done to evaluate its compatibility with Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (PDPA). Hence, the aim of this paper is to identify the gaps between blockchain and PDP A in terms of their compatibility and to propose solutions to bridge the gaps. Based on the gaps identified, the paper proposed the use permissioned or private blockchain, off-chain storage and stealth address to enable a blockchain application to be compliant with PDPA.