# Privacy on the Blockchain

DevFeed: [Privacy on the Blockchain](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/privacy-on-the-blockchain-16744.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.ethereum.org/en/2016/01/15/privacy-on-the-blockchain>)

Author: Vitalik Buterin

Published: 2016-01-15T09:28:59Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Ethereum Foundation Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/ethereum-foundation-blog.md>)

Topics: [Blockchain](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/blockchain.md>), [Scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/scalability.md>), [audit trail](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/audit-trail.md>), [Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/security.md>)

Tags: [audit-trail](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/audit-trail.md>), [blockchain](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blockchain.md>), [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [privacy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/privacy.md>), [research-development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/research-development.md>), [scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scalability.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>), [technology](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/technology.md>)

## AI overview

The article examines privacy as a major challenge for blockchain technology. It explains that public blockchains can expose information to governments, family members, coworkers, and competitors, and discusses the difficulty of creating privacy-preserving solutions for arbitrary applications.

## Source excerpt

Blockchains are a powerful technology, as regular readers of the blog already likely agree. They allow for a large number of interactions to be codified and carried out in a way that greatly increases reliability, removes business and political risks associated with the process being managed by a central entity,...