It is difficult to retain privacy on a public blockchain. In contrast to popular belief, permissionless blockchains are completely transparent. All confirmed transactions are publicly observable and stored as part of the blockchain's history. The users' identities are only protected through the use of addresses that act as pseudonyms. This setup allows public blockchains to operate without any intermediaries and creates a system where everyone can mathematically verify the legitimacy and integrity of transactions as well as the current state of the ledger; but the setup raises severe privacy concerns.
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Nadler et al. (2023) studied this question.