In previous articles we have discussed how secure multiparty computation (MPC) and public blockchains can enhance digital identity for verification and self-sovereign identity (SSI) in particular.
It is now time to take a deeper look into how Partisia Blockchain and its MPC capabilities enhances SSI to cope with the unsolved challenges around private data activation.
This is a great opportunity for SSI builders to pick up cutting edge privacy technology and leverage our support to launch the next billion dollar digital identity business.
For the best teams, we offer grants and dedicated support directly from our core team. Apply for grants here.
Now, let’s get into it!
SSI revolves around issuers such as KYC providers that issue verifiable credentials (VCs) to users who store the identity data on their own hardware – therefore “self-sovereign” – typically in an identity software wallet on the phone. Verifiers are the third-party who can receive various types of identity data presentations from credentials such as proof of country and birthdate from a KYC credential. Presentations of VCs is the equivalent of showing physical credentials such as a passport, but in a digital and secure manner.
Presentations are generated in identity wallets by the users themselves and the exchange of them are facilitated by a secure connection that is often managed by a centralized service called an agency.
The idea about SSI becomes really powerful when users receive and hold multiple VCs from multiple issuers that make up entire digital identities, which is entirely owned and managed by the user at first. The complete identity data simply will not rest anywhere else besides on the users own hardware, until the users chose to present the data which in addition can be protected with privacy features such as selective disclosure and zero-knowledge proofs e.g. you only show jurisdiction and prove that you are more than 18 years on from a complete KYC credential that contains much more information than what’s needed for the verifier.
Notably, VCs are inherently more secure than traditional credentials, such as physical driver’s license, because digital signatures make them tamper-resistant and instantaneously verifiable. Moreover, VCs are digital, portable and reusable, which cuts cost and makes everything much more convenient for users.
However, as much as SSI offers users true ownership of identity data, it also poses challenges in regards to privacy and compliance when activating the data through presentations for verifiers, backup and storage.
In its current form, SSI does not have strong enough privacy when activating the data through presentations because once a VC has been presented to a verifier, regardless of using privacy features such as selective disclosure and zero-knowledge proofs, the data rest with the verifier in a black box that users cannot control. How data is handled from there would rely on trusting the verifiers to comply with regulations such as GDPR, potential auditing from authorities, and any specific agreements with the users. Furthermore, there is a lack of frameworks and standards for compliant, provable and transparent data monetization which is needed to encourage mass adoption.
Another major issue with SSI in its current form is that users are only left with two options for backup of identity data that either compromise security or privacy. One option is to backup and store identity data on another piece of self owned hardware resulting in multiple self-sovereign controlled backups. However, in reality, this is not convenient for users and if hardware is lost, so is the data.
The second option, which is by far the most convenient and popular, is to store identity data externally with a third party, such as a cloud service. This way, users will unlikely lose the data itself and can always access it. However, relying on centralized external services can result in compromising privacy and giving up control because there’s little transparency in how data is stored and manipulated.
Another profound problem with SSI in its current state is the reliance on intermediaries, often known as agencies or agents, to establish connections between parties and facilitate the exchange of VCs.
Partisia Blockchain has as the world’s first L1 operationalized MPC for general computation on a public blockchain, which means that one or multiple data sources can allow others to compute on the data while it stays encrypted and operate under predefined rules expressed in smart contracts. This is also known as confidential compute and several privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) share this capability. However, MPC is superior when computing on multiple inputs and quantum resistance is a hard requirement.
Confidential compute opens up an ocean of new use cases such as private voting, RWA ownership verification, supply chain provenance, GDPR compliant data analytics across multiple data silos, and very importantly for this article enhanced and complete privacy in SSI.
Partisia Blockchain and its MPC capabilities allows a user with an identity wallet to encrypt identity data with secret sharing encryption and then share it with a network of MPC nodes that will not be able to read the original data because the secret shards are distributed amongst the network. There is simply no way to reconstruct the secret and read the original data unless individual secret shards are collected based on a threshold, which is protected by MPC and a collateralized non-collusion security model. Furthermore, secret sharing encryption is by default quantum resistant, so it is not possible to brute force a secret with a supercomputer unlike other PETs like fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) that relies on public key encryption.
This also means that MPC allows for users to have data stored in a “self-sovereign” external network which can function as back-up or simply storage, but more importantly, a private SSI platform to activate the data against a verifier’s request through private verifications and standard privacy features. Partisia Blockchain natively supports multiple standards and can produce presentations for private verification, but also across private and public blockchain for various purposes.
Private verification is really what sets MPC enhanced SSI apart from the current SSI e.g. during the recent pandemic, many attempts were made to create a Covid-19 passport so citizens could prove they were either vaccinated or tested negative while preserving privacy in the claim. Zero-knowledge proofs are good for this, but limited to only presenting yes/no results to a verifier without extensive physical verification, such as ID cards, which would compromise SSI principles.
In collaboration with HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Partisia Blockchain developed a solution where identification is reduced to matching an individual’s face with an image of the person’s face powered by MPC in order to increase security and privacy. The Partisia Blockchain ensures trustworthy information is broadcasted to the verifier and MPC ensures that the private information about the citizen is used only for matching and kept hidden for the verifier.
While MPC is powerful for verification, the idea about having identity data in a private secure network is also useful for use cases that revolves around private AI, e.g. identity data can remain encrypted while a private AI model compute on it and only when the user received the output it can be decrypted incl. the result from the AI model.
Very significant for the above solutions is that the agency is left out so the secure connections and data presentations are managed directly from the MPC clusters where the data privacy is protected and data managed completely on the users’ terms.
As aforementioned, MPC is powerful when it comes to computing on multiple inputs while preserving privacy. This unlocks a massive potential for compliant and private data analytics on multiple users data combined for use cases such as healthcare data for pharmaceutical R&D and data aggregations for monetization where users are rewarded, but didn’t give up privacy.
The concept is the same as for a single user data where secret sharing encryption is performed and the secret shards are distributed to MPC clusters. However, for multiple users the MPC nodes are able to combine and compute on the data while never understanding the complete input and share encrypted outputs which can only be decrypted and understood by selected users as predefined in zk smart contracts.
DID/SSI is a large stack of different technologies and this article has only covered how to enhance SSI which is the lacking component to offer compliant end-to-end solutions on top of the existing stack. Together with our partners, we are also building out a significant amount of the fundamental DID/SSI component such as agency, mobile SDKs, identity wallets, standards, DID method, DID resolvers, onchain DID documents, definitions and schemas, trusted registries and more.
Reach out to us for a conversation and learn more about our technologies.
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As a part of my role at Partisia Blockchain Foundation, I meet a large number of interesting people at various conferences and events. Some are in Web3 in nature and others are more institution based. And I find there is a difference between these two types of people that highlight what I think is one of the biggest challenges in Web3 currently.
In Web3 conferences, I’m usually meeting the same people I met year after year.
My recent trip to Malaysia and Germany showed this phenomenon clearly. During the Malaysia Blockchain Week, I met with Web3 people who were all in the industry for many years working on similar projects as they were last year. On the other hand, outside of the blockchain conference, I also met with leaders in the health tech industry whom we had deep conversations about how to solve real world problems using Partisia Blockchain’s MPC technology. At the IAS event in Germany, with over 25k in attendance, we were the only blockchain company presenting a Web3 solution.
Kurt Nielsen, our president, put it best in this interview where he speaks about the importance of “growing the pie” in Web3. Meaning that in order for Web3 to succeed, we must find new users, new real world use cases, and new ways to solve real problems using this wonderful technology called the blockchain. Yet, everyone I meet in Web3 conferences is always telling me, “I’ve been in this space for the last x number of years.” It is extremely rare to meet someone who says “I’m new to the blockchain space and interested in learning how this can solve our real world problem”.
Fighting for a share of the same pie
The current Web3 conferences, for the most part, have people who are fighting for the “share of the same pie” it has been fighting for multiple years, so to speak. It’s the entity that has the same players, building the same type of applications for the same group of people year after year. And while you have a few real world industries looking to experiment with blockchain, most, if not all of the Web3 focused events I go to are full of people building the same thing, but packaged just slightly differently. Why is this the case?
And so we see two different themes emerging. Those who are the early adopters, the visionaries and pioneers building Web3 and integrating blockchain technology into real world use cases to solve real problems, and those who are looking for the quick token launch and get rich plan disguised with the pretense of revolutionizing an industry. One has a long and promising future. The other… Well, you can only go so far when everyone is fighting for the same pie..
“Privacy, interoperability, and scalability are fundamental principles that have been pillars of past successful technology innovations and they will be for the Web3 industry as well.”
Partisia Blockchain’s focus has always been about collaboration and solving real world problems. We have founders who understand the challenges of the real world. In the real world, privacy is a fundamental human right, and your private information should not be disclosable to everyone. In the real world, people collaborate and work together to grow the market you are in rather than close off your ecosystem to only those who can pay with your own currency. In the real world, infrastructures are scalable, available to support the world’s population. (Think the internet for example) These fundamental principles play out in real world scenarios and while blockchain provides an incredible value proposition, one of decentralization and trustlessness, it is not a complete solution. Privacy, interoperability, and scalability are fundamental principles that have been pillars of past successful technology innovations and they will be for the Web3 industry as well..
This has been our focus, and the reason why our blockchain architecture is built different. And, as a result, we have quite a number of real world partners working to build things that impact the real world. And we continue to garner interest from people who are looking to solve real problems.
We are committed to growing the pie by bringing the technology to non Web3 industries. Use cases like the humanitarian token system, where we are able to distribute financial aid to those impacted in conflict regions. A donation platform where using blockchain technology, aid can be distributed not only quickly, but also transparently giving the donors full visibility to whom and how their donations made an impact. Tackling counterfeit medication in Africa through a combination of transparent and private supply chain infrastructure. These are samples of real world problems Partisia Blockchain is tackling to solve.
In the Web3 space, we are also focused on adding these fundamental principles that are currently missing to help grow the pie within. Providing DeFi solutions that solve for interoperability, scalability and privacy. Partnering with academia to create a framework for DID that governments can support. Building solutions that enable a real trustless, secure, and interoperable self custody solution that can be built to suit the users individual requirement.
The Web3 industry will undoubtedly continue to survive. Thrive even. But it will also evolve from the current hype cycle to something more mature. As this maturity continues, the need to meet these basic fundamental principles will become more apparent. We also need to work together to grow the pie, rather than fighting for a share in the existing pie. And those who understand and share in this vision will help drive the next generation of Web3 solutions. We hope, through this maturity, we will grow the pie, and perhaps see a new friendly face join the next Web3 conference.
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This is part 3 of a three-part series where we review the three key technology innovations of Partisia Blockchain and compare them with other blockchain technologies. You can read our intro and the performance comparison between various other chains here, or read more about the privacy layer comparison here.
Part 3 reviews the various web3 infrastructure aiming to address the issue around interoperability between different chains, the techniques used as well as pros and cons of various technologies.
Partisia Blockchain is deeply committed to interoperability, aiming to foster trust and collaboration across diverse blockchain networks. Its unique architecture addresses the challenges of cross-chain interactions through a multi-faceted approach, including its innovative “Bring Your Own Coin” (BYOC) concept and advanced bridging solutions.
BYOC allows users to pay gas fees in various liquid coins like Ethereum, BNB, MATIC, USDC, and USDT, rather than requiring a native token. This flexibility enhances convenience and accessibility, eliminating the need for users to acquire a specific token for network interaction. Moreover, BYOC enables developers to open their decentralized applications (dApps) to a wider audience, as users can transact with their preferred cryptocurrency. The stable fee structure, pegged to USD, ensures predictability for projects and users alike, regardless of underlying asset price fluctuations.
Partisia Blockchain’s token bridge is another core innovation. It employs a combined approach of double bookkeeping, staking as collateral, and large-scale MPC-based selection of oracle nodes to form a secure and efficient bridge. This design ensures a 1:1 correspondence between tokens across chains, enhancing security and trust in cross-chain transactions. The token bridge also incorporates a mechanism of frequently expiring epochs and MPC tokens as collateral staking, limiting the accumulation of financial risk.
For securing digital assets, Partisia Blockchain offers MOCCA, a decentralized and fully programmable custody solution. This enables institutions, DAOs, exchanges, and wallet providers to collaborate trustlessly to secure the assets of their users. MOCCA’s smart contracts provide flexibility in defining access controls, voting powers, NFT permissions, and transaction rules, catering to diverse custody requirements.
Partisia Blockchain’s versatility also allows it to function as a second layer for other blockchains. By deploying a zero-knowledge smart contract on Partisia alongside a public contract on the Layer 1 chain, dApps can leverage Partisia’s privacy-preserving capabilities without migrating their entire infrastructure. This approach enables seamless integration of privacy features into existing applications, promoting wider adoption of privacy-preserving technologies.
LayerZero is a messaging protocol designed to facilitate seamless communication and data exchange between blockchains, fostering an “omnichain” vision where all chains are interoperable. This is achieved through a Mesh Network architecture that overcomes the limitations of existing cross-chain solutions.
The innovation lies in facilitating communication between blockchains without the need for costly on-chain nodes or insecure middle chains. This is achieved through a combination of Ultra-Light Nodes (ULNs), blockchain endpoints, decentralized third-party oracles, and relayers. Oracles, such as Chainlink and Band Protocol, fetch transaction data from the block header, while independent relayers verify the transaction proof. This dual verification process ensures the security and validity of the message.
Functioning as a messaging layer, LayerZero enables communication between different blockchains and their smart contracts. The Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) contract standard enables seamless cross-chain token transfers without asset wrapping or intermediate chains. However, this functionality is tied to the LayerZero ecosystem, which limits the potential reach and interoperability of tokens.
Each application built on LayerZero can configure a security stack consisting of several required and optional decentralized verifier networks (DVNs) to verify its messages. These DVNs can leverage various validation methods, including zk-technology, middlechains, and consortium signers. Additionally, Rate Limiter allows controlling the number of cross-chain messages within a specific time frame, preventing denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and ensuring regulatory compliance. However, this is at a cost of performance.
This flexible approach to security empowers applications built on LayerZero to tailor their verification mechanisms to their specific needs and risk profiles. By not prescribing a single method, LayerZero allows for a diverse range of security configurations across the ecosystem.
Cosmos is designed to be the “Internet of Blockchains,” addressing the limitations of isolated blockchain networks. It achieves interoperability and scalability through a combination of innovative technologies and a modular architecture.
Instead of a single monolithic blockchain, Cosmos allows for the creation of multiple independent blockchains, each with its own specific use case and consensus mechanism. Developers can leverage pre-built modules for common blockchain functionalities, reducing development time and complexity.
The Cosmos Hub serves as the nexus for the entire Cosmos ecosystem. It acts as the intermediary connecting various blockchains within the network. Instead of each blockchain directly linking to every other chain, they all plug into the Cosmos Hub. This hub keeps track of interactions and facilitates communication among different zones (blockchains) in a secure and efficient manner.
Cosmos ensures security through a decentralized validator model. Each chain has its own set of validators responsible for verifying transactions and securing the network. This decentralized approach eliminates single points of failure and enhances the overall security of the ecosystem.
Replicated Security is a feature that allows the Cosmos Hub to provide its strong security to other blockchains, known as “consumer chains” through the IBC protocol. This enables consumer chains to benefit from the Cosmos Hub’s security without needing to maintain their own validator sets.
Interchain Accounts (ICA) represent a significant advancement in cross-chain interoperability, making the Cosmos ecosystem more interconnected and user-friendly. With ICA, applications can directly access and utilize functionalities of applications on other chains and users are able to perform actions like token transfers, swaps, staking, and governance participation from a single account. The benefits of ICA extend to various use cases, including cross-chain liquidity provision, lending, borrowing, and NFT transfers. It enhances governance by allowing voting on proposals across multiple chains without switching accounts.
In addition to IBC, Cosmos supports bridge protocols like Gravity Bridge and Wormhole Gateway. These bridges connect the Cosmos ecosystem with other blockchain networks like Ethereum and Solana, further expanding interoperability and enabling asset transfers and cross-chain communication between diverse ecosystems.
The comparative analysis of various blockchain technologies reveals a spectrum of approaches to privacy, scalability, and interoperability.
Partisia Blockchain’s focus on privacy is not only a technological advancement, but also a philosophical shift towards a more user-centric and privacy-conscious approach to blockchain technology. By seamlessly integrating cutting-edge cryptographic techniques, such as multi-party computation (MPC) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), with a high-performance blockchain architecture, it presents a unique paradigm that transcends the limitations of traditional blockchain models. This fusion of privacy and performance empowers the development of decentralized applications and smart contracts capable of securely processing sensitive data while maintaining scalability and interoperability across diverse networks.
As the demand for privacy-centric applications continues to grow, Partisia Blockchain’s innovative solutions will be instrumental in driving the next wave of decentralized innovation. Its ability to address the inherent challenges of blockchain technology while maintaining efficiency and interoperability positions it as a compelling platform for building the next generation of decentralized applications.