Decentralized location sharing using blockchain
Date
2025
Authors
Rylan, Peebles
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Victoria
Abstract
Location sharing on smartphones is becoming increasingly common; however, such services rely on a trusted intermediary, in the form of cloud servers owned by tech companies such as Apple and Google. This reliance means transmission of location data is not fully secure, and could be accessed by the company or exposed in the event of a data breach. This project explores the feasibility of using blockchain technology to enable secure, decentralized data sharing, through the development of a proof-of-concept decentralized application (DApp) on the Ethereum blockchain. This project leverages the security and immutability of blockchain to create an alternative to the existing location-sharing model. The design consists of a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, developed using Remix IDE, and a mobile application built with Flutter. The Ethereum smart contract is deployed on the Sepolia testnet (thus, real ETH is not used for testing). Coordinates are retrieved from the device GPS and encrypted using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and communication with the blockchain is achieved via an Alchemy API.
Description
Keywords
blockchain, decentralized application, Ethereum, location privacy, location tracking, peer-to-peer