Woofun AI reports that South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) has established its first-ever guidelines for blockchain-based services, a regulatory milestone triggered by Bithumb’s cross-border data violation as reported by Yonhap News.

The core prohibition mandates that personally identifiable information, specifically resident registration numbers, must not be recorded directly on a blockchain. This rule directly addresses the risks associated with transferring personal data abroad, ensuring that sensitive identifiers remain isolated from immutable ledgers.

Structurally, the guidelines target a critical privacy loophole where on-chain data, when combined with off-chain personal data, enables the tracking of transaction histories. To mitigate this, a dual-layered approach is enforced, requiring robust encryption for off-chain records to prevent linkage with public blockchain entries.

Lee Jae-hyung, Director of the Investigation and Coordination Bureau, issued a specific technical warning regarding cryptographic hygiene. He noted that if random numbers used in the digital signature process are reused, attackers can deduce and steal private keys, necessitating fresh random numbers for each transaction to prevent such breaches.

Per Woofun AI, these measures influence the global conversation among crypto-active nations, signaling that regulatory decisions in digitally connected markets will increasingly demand compliance with personal data protection laws. Companies must now design technical architecture with privacy from the ground up, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

This marks a definitive shift in the regulatory landscape, balancing the transparency of blockchain with the privacy rights of individuals. By addressing both the storage of on-chain identifiers and the security of off-chain data, the PIPC provides a clear path forward for exchanges and blockchain services to follow.