The Transparency Challenge in Blockchain-Enabled Sustainable Development Goals Applications: Exploring Privacy-Preserving Techniques and Emerging Platforms

Abstract

Blockchain technology has emerged as a key enabler for achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by offering transparent, decentralized solutions across multiple sectors. However, its inherent transparency introduces significant privacy challenges, particularly in sensitive areas such as healthcare, energy, finance, and supply chains, where confidentiality is critical. To address this tension, this paper explores a range of emerging privacy-preserving techniques, including Ring Signatures, Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC), Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), and mixers, analyzing their implementation, effectiveness, and limitations. Furthermore, we conduct a detailed technical study of next-generation blockchain platforms that integrate these techniques to balance privacy, scalability, and interoperability. Our contributions include a deep dive into privacy challenges in blockchain applications for SDGs, a comparative analysis of privacy-preserving solutions, a comprehensive evaluation of emerging platforms, and a review of existing research that leverages these privacy techniques in SDG-related domains. This work aims to provide critical insights into how blockchain technology can be effectively adapted to support sustainable development while safeguarding sensitive data.