LoChain: A Decentralized and Privacy-Preserving Blockchain Protocol for Mobility Data Management

Abstract. Mobility data has become a strategic asset in urban planning, crisis management and smart city operations. However, centralized systems for mobility tracking raise severe privacy concerns as they have the ability to directly link individuals to their movements. To address these issues, we propose LoChain, a decentralized protocol that enables the privacy-preserving collection and processing of mobility data based on blockchain technology. More precisely, LoChain replaces precise coordinates with standardized geoaddresses, associate user movements to disposable identities, communication them via Tor routing and stores the resulting data across a decentralized network built on Hyperledger Fabric. The system also employs a novel geopool and multi-channel architecture to simulate sharding, enabling localized data ingestion, inter-district communication and global statistical aggregation without compromising individual privacy. Localized position obfuscation and pseudo-random identity purging are used to further prevent reidentification. A proof-of-concept prototype, including an Android app, blockchain backend and visualization layer was developed and evaluated using synthetic data from 10,000 virtual users. The experiments results obtained from the simulation highlight the LoChain’s ability to preserve user privacy while maintaining analytical utility. Finally, we also introduce an incentive model as well as a decentralized governance structure to ensure long-term scalability, regulatory compliance and participatory control.