Next Generation Contact Tracing

PoC For Contact Tracing Built on Conflux Network and How It Can Address Privacy Concerns

This is where blockchain technology can step in. Public blockchain networks operate independently of previously mentioned institutions, and additionally, all the code can easily be open-sourced for verification and collaborative development. In that, there is the opportunity to increase blockchain technology adoption across the world, introduce a more privacy-conscientious contact tracing system, and work to better manage the next viral outbreak.

Overall, the core mechanism is tokenized contact that is facilitated by transactions on the Conflux Network to leverage incentive benefits as well as transaction sponsorship to help expand adoption. Contact is initiated through the exchange of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) payloads which are then hashed as addresses, and tokens are sent to the corresponding addresses.

The newRegistration() function is used to deploy an individual token contract that facilitates unique token transfers, and can only be called once for each address; however, the address of the individual contract can be retrieved using the getIndividual() function. The registerPayload() function takes BLE payload that is passed in as a bytes array and hashes it to a unique address. This address is used to map individual token contracts to each payload in order to facilitate the checkHealth() function. Additionally, the registerPayload() function calls reward() which transfers a reward to the user once a day. In the checkHealth() function, an address pair is passed in; these are used to verify that the user is allowed to check the health status of a contact. The contactPayload is used to connect with the proper individual token contract, and the personalPayload is used to verify the user and the contact token exchange in the checkStatus() function of the individual contract. If the pair of addresses is valid, then the health status of the contact is returned.

When the individual contract is first created, the constructor() is called to set up the proper access controls for the registration contract and the user. The main function is contact() which takes the contact BLE payload, hashes it to an address, and keeps track of it similar to a token amount. The toggleHealthy() and getStatus() are used to check and manage the health status of the individual, and others can check the health status through the registration contract that calls the checkStatus() function. The checkStatus() function will check if the requested payload address has been sent a token, and return the health parameter accordingly to ensure that only actual contacts have access to the parameter.

Privacy concerns are a very valid consideration especially for centralized contact tracing apps. Additionally, using a public blockchain may also raise concerns as all transactions are public. However, there is a level of privacy guaranteed by the anonymity of addresses. If a user’s address has not been directly linked with them, then it is very difficult to form that connection and virtually impossible to find a specific person’s address. So even though transactions are public, the person behind the transaction can remain anonymous. Another method to leverage the anonymity is for a user to switch wallet addresses periodically to add another layer of randomness to any tracking.

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