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Free Chain: Enabling Freedom of Expression through Public Blockchains
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2021-06
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Abstract
Everyone should have the right to expression and opinion without interference. Nevertheless, Internet censorship is often misused to block freedom of speech. The distributed ledger technology provides a globally shared database geographically dispersed and cannot be controlled by a central authority. Blockchain is an emerging technology that enabled distributed ledgers and has recently been employed for building various types of applications. This thesis demonstrates a unique application of blockchain technologies to create a platform supporting freedom of expression. The thesis adopts permissionless and public blockchains to leverage their advantages of providing an on-chain immutable and tamper-proof publication medium. The study shows the blockchain potential for delivering a censorship-resistant publication platform. The thesis presents and evaluates possible methods for building such a system using the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain networks. Our results demonstrate that the Ethereum blockchain is much more beneficial for our system as it requires a much lower cost than Bitcoin to use as a platform to allow freedom of speech.