Changing the data market business model from buying and selling of your data to buying and selling the “use” of your data.
Current advertising data market industry involves selling and buying of data. Regardless of the type of data the advertisers are looking for, it’s all about collecting the data from various means, categorizing it, perhaps pseudo anonymizing it and selling the data to advertisers. And data, as it turns out, is a very lucrative business. The global market size of the advertising market is estimated to be US$600–800 billion and the internet makes up about half of that size.
You probably have heard this statement before. If it is free, you are probably the product being sold. And this is a very common way for the data market players to create a “free” application that allows the collection of data that the market players will buy and sell. The more accurate the data, the more valuable. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, etc all use similar business models. But there are other players in this market, some you may have heard of in the news (Cambridge Analytics for example) or smaller companies that trade your data under the covers. They will collect from various sources, reshuffle, and resell the data to others.
But as with any business model, there are challenges and the data market is not without its share of issues.
Partisia Blockchain’s privacy first blockchain with research lead secure multiparty computation (sMPC) can help solve these issues and also provide data market participants with alternate business models that can bridge the gap between consumer privacy concerns and better data overall.
This changes the data market business model from buying and selling of your data to buying and selling the use of your data. By shifting the paradigm to a services model, new potential revenue streams become available while being able to solve some of the difficult challenges facing the advertising industry.
Projects like Blockchain-Ads and Kin are already looking to take advantage of this new model and we are exited to see where this will lead in the future.
Connect with us at build@partisiablockchain.com to see how we can help you create new business models, solve challenges and provide new incentives for the users to use your system.
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Throughout the ages, famous philosophers have grappled with the concept of good governance. From Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hobbes to Rousseau, Voltaire and Rawls, different perspectives have existed and challenged each other over the ages on the topic. Today, in democratic societies at least, the general consensus is that of a government that is accountable to the people, with checks and balances, the guarantees of fundamental rights, and integrity in how it operates. New technologies, such as blockchain, can aid in the pursuit of good governance — this article outlines a few possible examples of how Partisia Blockchain could help governments innovate and better their governance practices:
Paperwork, licenses and standing in lines — bureaucracy is something that regardless of political affiliation, people love to hate. But the true purpose of bureaucracy (whether well-designed or not) is to ensure due process and guarantee people’s rights. This in essence very noble pursuit can run into a variety of different problems, from potential inefficiency to outright corruption. A public blockchain could help to streamline processes and make them more transparent, paperwork can be filed and traced through different steps on the blockchain, whereas combined with MPC the private information in these processes can be kept secret, or only available to certain parties. In certain countries, where corruption is an issue, the intransparency of bureaucracies can allow for wrongdoing in e.g. bureaucratic processes such as ignoring, changing and/or the outright fabrication of documents. A public blockchain could allow for more trust in bureaucratic institutions, especially if those institutions don’t have control over the nodes that operate the blockchain. This is the principle behind a project called DelNorte.
DelNorte is currently running pilot projects in Latin America creating NFTs out of real estate deeds and adding them to a public blockchain. This is meant to make the bureaucratic process more efficient, give more stability and transparency regarding real estate ownership in the participating countries, circumvent potential corruption and maintain the integrity of the institution. While the government is the door to access to the system, the government does not have control over the blockchain and the listed real estate deed NFTs. Partisia Blockchain is proud to have entered into a partnership with DelNorte, helping them to add privacy and security to their e-government solutions.
Governments provide goods and services to their citizens, from parks, highways and schools to militaries for the national defense. While some governments have more resources than others, many of the goods used to e.g., build and maintain a public highway, need to be contracted to third parties. What is usually the case when a government has to contract such goods or services out, is that they publish a tender for which parties can bid. This ideally leads to many different companies bidding for the contract with the government, attempting to underbid each other and/or outclass each other with the quality of the good/service that they provide.
Nonetheless, public procurement bidding processes are often highly intransparent and even prone to corruption, which cheat the taxpayers out of the best possible deal they could have had. Blockchain technology could also help combat this problem, making the bidding process transparent and establishing trust with the general public. However, a major issue with the transparency of a public blockchain is that it does not allow for the hiding of certain sensitive information e.g., a company’s capabilities, classified technology, etc. that could be part of the bidding process. This is where E-Trusty comes in: E-Trusty is a dApp building on Partisia Blockchain to use the public blockchain to create transparency, while obfuscating sensitive information in the bidding process using MPC. The goal is to create a platform for public procurement that allows for the transparency of seeing multiple bids for a given contract, while using MPC to hide and protect sensitive information.
Multiple central banks around the world are beginning to develop and implement so-called central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). As opposed to digital currencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, these digital currencies are centralized and issued by a national bank. They are pegged to the value of a fiat currency and are meant to be a part of the existing financial system. There is however a major concern regarding CBDCs and that is that due to their centralized structure and control, they could essentially allow for a central bank, and by extension a government, to have complete insight into how people are spending their digital money. Furthermore, it is also feasible to imagine that a government could easily overreach, especially if it were to become corrupt, and easily seize such digital money. There would therefore need to be checks and balances guaranteed in the application of a CBDC. One solution for this problem, could be to use MPC to make the settlements of such a CBDC private. Such a system could also be designed to allow for certain transparency towards a government entity with the sufficient legal justification such as a warrant. The CBDCs settlements would be intransparent to e.g. the national bank or the government, however a court could allow for access to certain transaction data for a judicial institution.
In many places across the world, trust in elections is waning: the intransparency of voting systems, combined with distrust fueled by political rhetoric are a major threat to the integrity of democracies today. The recent coup in Bolivia or the storming of the U.S. Capitol have shown that even an unsubstantiated claim of fraud in an election can lead to political violence or even the overturning of a democratically elected government. E-voting, and particularly blockchain-based e-voting solutions, have attempted to solve this issue. They have however run into a variety of problems: intransparency or too much transparency, hardware and/or software vulnerabilities, among many others. Nonetheless, Partisia Blockchain’s MPC technology could help in solving many of these issues. MPC could be used to assure the privacy of a voter’s ballot, while showing votes being tallied for specific candidates in real-time. The election results could be publicly auditable and contestable and voters could be able to track their own votes. This kind of solution could in theory ensure safe, transparent and auditable elections, while keeping people’s votes secret.
Partisia Blockchain Foundation is dedicated to facilitating innovative solutions to real-life problems. Democratic innovation is one of the fields we are proud to contribute to.
Please contact us, if you have any questions about how our technology could enable better governance or if you think your organization could benefit from our technology.
Contact information: build@partisiablockchain.com
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During the course of July, students, young professionals, academics, and industry leaders came together from across the globe for the SDG Summer School. This Summer School is organized by the University of Geneva and hosted in the SDG Innovation Lab, close to the United Nations as well as on different campuses around the world in parallel. Partisia Blockchain had the privilege of attending and actively participating in the program.
Groups of students were formed, assigned a coach and began to develop an idea into a project. The projects were all aimed at solving pressing problems and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After three weeks the groups pitched their projects to a jury consisting of decision makers from major institutions such as the University of Geneva, the Global Fund and the Olympic Committee.
I had the opportunity of representing Partisia Blockchain and coaching a group of students in creating an innovative solution to women’s health:
“Her Menstrual Trials” is an application using MPC and Blockchain to track women’s health trends and the effects of medications without revealing anyone’s personal health data. The blockchain would provide crypto-incentives to the participants and help store and track the data collected, while MPC would keep the data private, while allowing for real-time, continuous data collection from the participants.
Furthermore, Partisia Blockchain had the pleasure of sponsoring a student from Copenhagen to come to Geneva and participate in the Summer School.
The SDG Summer School is an impactful event empowering young minds to find solutions to the most pressing problems around the world. Partisia Blockchain is proud to support such an initiative and help to contribute to a brighter future for all.
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In 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, causing a wave of changes to terms and conditions in your favorite applications across the globe. GDPR aims to increase people’s control and rights over their own personal information and heavily penalizes companies that infringe on these rights. Infringing on the rights of EU citizens laid out in GDPR could result in a fine of €20 million or 4% of the annual global turnover of an enterprise, so compliance is strongly incentivized. This new regulation is widely considered a major turning point in data protection and privacy rights, starting a policy diffusion of similar data protection laws across the globe. GDPR is law in every member country of the European Union and establishes a “single data market” within the EEA. Similar regulations have also been adopted in California, Chile, Japan, South Africa, Argentina, Turkey and Brazil, among others.
GDPR (as well as many of the similar regulations) involves multiple core tenets, among others setting out the principles for which personal data can be used and processed. Lawful purposes of the use of personal data and the digital rights that citizens have over their personal data. While there are many different compliance aspects of data protection regulations, such as GDPR, here are a few examples of how our technology could help your organization stay compliant:
GDPR requires organizations processing personal data to transform the data in such a way that it cannot be connected to the person it was collected from (pseudonymization). Partisia Blockchain could help an enterprise disassociate a person from their (encrypted) data, assuring such pseudonymization through the use of multiparty computation (MPC) technology. This pseudonymization can also be done in a way to allow for continuous collection of data from the same individual, if required for e.g. a longer-term study.
Furthermore, the concept of MPC also can also aid in maintaining an individual’s control over their data, as e.g. the concept of MPC secret sharing can allow for useful outputs being generated without compromising the underlying data (see Multiparty computation: The beacon of privacy solutions explained). MPC (especially combined with a blockchain) can also therefore increase the security of personal data, as the data and calculations are all run in a decentralized fashion by nodes that are all independent from each other. Partisia Blockchain’s nodes and their operators are all independent, run independent systems and have been vetted for cybersecurity by Partisia Blockchain experts.
Another right laid out by GDPR is the so-called right of access. This is the right of people to be able to see how their data is being processed and with whom it is being shared. The ledger kept on a blockchain could help an organization provide an immutable record to ensure this right. For the same reason, the blockchain could help organizations provide the record of processing activities required for GDPR-compliance under certain circumstances as well. As opposed to some other blockchains, Partisia Blockchain also allows for the possibility of private data to be removed from the record. Essentially meaning that data entered into the blockchain can be erased later on, allowing for compliance with GDPR’s right of erasure (the right for people to have their personal data removed from a database).
Lastly, the geographical location of servers used to process personal data could sometimes mean the difference between compliance and a criminal offense. Partisia Blockchain’s jurisdiction management v1.0 allows organizations’ developers to specify the geographic location of nodes to be used in calculating personal data. This could for example allow for private data from the EU to only be sent to EU-based nodes, ensuring that the integrity of the single data market and the data rights of EU-citizens are not breached.
Partisia Blockchain is committed to empowering others in solving real-world problems using our cutting-edge technology. Data rights and data privacy challenges are two of these problems.
Please contact us, if you have any questions about how our technology could enable data privacy or think we can help your organization in improving its data protection architecture.
Contact information: build@partisiablockchain.com
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The point of this document is to provide the shortest (and most intuitive) possible introduction to each of the technologies mentioned in the title. I hope I succeed in this endeavor.
The technologies in this document all — with exception of differential privacy — deal with “secure” computation on data. At a very high level, this means they can be used to perform an arbitrary computation on one or more pieces of data, while keeping this data private.
Secure multiparty computation, which is what we do here at Partisia, is the term for a fairly broad class of protocols that enable two separate entities (called parties) to compute a function, while revealing nothing except the output.
An MPC protocol typically proceeds in three phases: First the inputters secret-share their private inputs. This step can be thought of as each user sending a special type of encryption of their inputs to the nodes doing the computation. The encryption ensures, for example, that at least two out of three nodes are required to recover the input, and thus, we get a security model that relies on non-collusion. It could also be the case that all three nodes must collude to recover the input — in this case, we have a full threshold model (since all servers must collude to break privacy).
The next step involves the nodes (the servers A, B, and C) performing the computation on the encryptions (i.e., secret-shares) received in the input step.
When the nodes finish the computation, they will hold a secret-sharing of the output. Each node’s share is returned to the users, so they can recover the actual output.
As might be inferred from the figures above, MPC works particularly well if the computation nodes are well-connected. Indeed, what makes MPC expensive to run is all the data that the nodes have to send between each other.
MPC have been actively studied in academia since the early 1980s and there are a lot of good resources available to learn more about it:
Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) solves a very old problem: Can I have my data encrypted and compute on it too? FHE is a tool that allows us to not only store data encrypted on a server, but which allows the server to compute on it as well, without having to decrypt it at any point.
A user encrypts their private data and uploads it to a server. However, unlike a traditional E2EE (End-to-End-Encrypted) scenario, the server can actually perform a computation on the user’s private data — directly on ciphertext. The result can then be decrypted by the user using their private key.
FHE, unlike MPC, relies on clever cryptographic computation, rather than clever cryptographic protocols. On the one hand, this means FHE requires less data to be sent between the server and client compared to MPC. On the other hand, FHE requires a lot of computation to be done by the server.
Practically speaking, FHE is slower than MPC (unless we have an incredibly slow network, or incredibly powerful computers).
Practical FHE is a relatively new technology that only came about in 2009. However, since then it has received quite a bit of interest, especially from “bigger” players like Microsoft or IBM.
Partisia Blockchain supports FHE solutions.
While both MPC and FHE allow us to compute anything, zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) systems allow us to compute proofs. In short, ZKP allows us to compute functions where the output is either “true” or “false”.
ZKPs are incredibly popular in the blockchain space, mainly for their role in “rollups”. The particular type of ZKPs used for rollups are ZK-SNARKs, which are succinct proofs. In a nutshell, a succinct proof is a proof whose size is some fixed (small) constant, and where verification is fast. This makes smart particularly useful for blockchains since the proof and verification are both onchain.
That said, ZK rollups don’t actually use the zero-knowledge property — they only use the soundness and succinctness properties of the proof scheme.
Soundness simply means that it is very difficult to construct a proof that appears valid, but in actuality is not.
ZKPs, like FHE, takes place between a single user and a verifier. The user has a secret and they wish to convince the verifier about some fact concerning this secret, without revealing the secret. ZKPs don’t designate a particular verifier, so anyone can usually check that a proof is correct.
The final private computation technology I will talk about here is trusted execution environments. A trusted execution environment, or TEE, is basically just a piece of hardware that is trusted to do the right thing. If we trust this particular type of hardware, then private computing is clearly doable.
TEEs, being hardware, are tightly connected to some hardware vendor. Often when TEEs are mentioned, what is really meant is something like Intel’s SGX or ARM TrustZone. SGX is the TEE used by Secret Network, for example.
The security model of TEEs is fairly different compared to the other technologies I have written about so far, in that it is a lot more opaque. Vulnerabilities have been demonstrated in different iterations of different TEE products, especially SGX.
Differential privacy is radically different from the previous technologies. (In this discussion I will exclude ZKPs since it does not allow general computations.)
While MPC, TEE and FHE all provide means of computing something on private data, they do not really care about what that something is.
For example, it is possible (albeit pointless) to compute the identity function using both MPC, TEE and FHE.
This is because MPC, TEE and FHE allow us to compute anything. In particular, they allow us to perform computations that are not really private.
At this point, we may ask: Well, why would we perform such a silly computation on private data? For some computations, it might be easy to see that it is not private (in the sense that the original input can easily be inferred from the output). However, there are many computations that are seemingly private, but which can also leak the input if we are not careful. For example, it has been shown that it is possible to extract machine learning models, simply by querying a prediction API. In another example it was shown that it is possible to extract the data that a model was trained on.
These issues all arise because there are no restrictions on the computation that is performed. Differential privacy tries to fix this.
Differential privacy is used to provide a fairly intuitive guarantee. Suppose we are given two databases A and B. The only difference between these two databases, is that a particular entry R exists in A but not in B. Differential privacy now states that, no matter which type of query we make on the database, we will not be able to guess whether we are interacting with A or B.
Naturally, this means that some queries cannot be allowed. For example, it is not possible to obtain differential privacy if one can simply ask “Is record R in the database?”. Generally, differential privacy is obtained by adding noise, or synthetic data, to the database as well as restricting the type of queries that are allowed.
What makes differential privacy different from MPC, TEE and FHE, is that differential privacy makes guarantees about the output of a computation, whereas MPC, TEE and FHE makes guarantees about the process of arriving at that output. In summary:
This also means that differential privacy is not in direct “competition” with MPC, TEE or FHE, but rather complements them.
While each technology has its specific advantages and use cases, it is our feeling that Partisia Blockchain’s MPC, backed by 35 years of research and practical implementation does seem to provide the most overall coverage of all possible scenarios with very little drawback.
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A blockchain, at its very core, is a way for everyone to agree on what the current state of the world is, without having to rely on a trusted authority.
Of course, by “everyone” we don’t actually mean everyone, but instead everyone who believes in the security model. Likewise, by “the world” we also don’t actually mean the world, but rather, whatever is currently written on the blockchain’s ledger. Nevertheless, well-known blockchains such as bitcoin or ethereum both have market caps in the 100s of billions of USD, which tells us that the technology excites people.
Programmable blockchains, in particular, are exciting because their “world” is very rich. On a programmable blockchain, the “world” is basically the current memory of a computer, and so, simply by being clever about how we design the programs that run on this computer, we can use it to accomplish almost anything.
Let’s digress for a bit and classify programs into three categories:
— Those that take a public input and produce a public output
— Those that take a private input and produce a public output
— Those that take a private input and produce a private output
A programmable blockchain such Ethereum supports programs of the first kind: Everyone sees what goes into a smart contract on Ethereum, and everyone sees what comes out again. This is great for some applications (like agreeing on who bought a NFT), but clearly not sufficient for others (like performing an auction).
Several solutions have surfaced which attempt to support the remaining two types of computations. Let’s take a brief look at some of them:
Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are, in a nutshell, a way for someone to convince (i.e., prove to) someone that they know or possess something, without revealing anything about that something. One situation where this shows up, is when someone wishes to prove to someone else that they control a certain amount of tokens.
ZKPs can therefore be used for private-public and private-private computation, to a limited degree. ZKPs can only compute, well, proofs. This in particular means that the computations are limited to a binary “yes” or “no” output. Moreover, ZKPs are inherently single-user oriented, so it is not possible to perform a computation that takes multiple private inputs.
Note that a program that takes a public input, but produces a private input does not make sense. If everyone can see the program and what goes into it, then everyone can obviously see the output as well.
Another private computation technique is fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE as it is called for short. At its very basic, FHE is a way of encrypting data such that it is possible to perform computations directly on the encryption.
This immediately tells us that FHE for sure supports private input private output type computations.
However, FHE, like ZKPs, are oriented towards a single user scenario. This means that, although FHE can perform any computation (which ZKPs cannot do), they cannot perform a computation that receives private inputs from multiple users.
In contrast to the two above technologies (as well as the next one), trusted execution environments (shortened as TEEs) are a purely hardware based solution to the private computing problem we’re looking at.
A TEE is simply a piece of hardware that have been hardened in certain ways that make it hard to break into. If we believe this to be the case, then a TEE can be used to perform the private input, public/private output computations we’re interested in.
Inputs are encrypted using a key stored only on the TEE, and computations take place on the TEE after decryption. When the computation is done, the output is encrypted (or not, depending on whether the output should be public or private) and then output by the TEE. In this way.
TEEs therefore clearly support the type of single-private-input computations talked about so far. However, the situation is a bit complicated if we want to receive inputs from multiple sources. Indeed, the only way that can be possible, is to make sure the same key is stored on everyone’s TEE.
The last tech I will look at is secure multiparty computation, or MPC. This privacy tech supports both types of computations, just like FHE and ZKPs, but where it distinguishes itself is that it naturally supports private inputs from multiple sources. Indeed, there’s a reason it’s called secure multiparty computation.
This makes MPC especially suited for a blockchain because of its multi-user nature.
The above categorization leaves out a lot of details, since it talked about neither the security models that each of the technologies use, nor about their efficiency.
Each of the four technologies above operate in a particular security model, and none of the models are exactly the same. Likewise, they each have some properties that make them desirable compared to the others. (For example, FHE requires more computation, but less communication, than MPC.)
In general, MPC does seem to come out on top, and is the only technology that easily supports computations where multiple users provide inputs. MPC, by its nature, is a decentralized technology, which is probably why it works so well in a blockchain setting. That being said, an ideal world would probably use all of the technologies in a carefully created orchestration to ensure the best guarantees in terms of both security and efficiency.
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Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is an ever increasingly important concept to enable users control over their own data and let them share it with whom they want. Today, data rests in centralized databases that belong to big enterprises with little transparency into how the data is actually being used and for what purpose.
SSI turns this around and data starts with the users, actually resting at users own device at first. Then it is up to the users to choose with whom and what data they share. Additionally, privacy-preserving features, such as selective disclosure and predicates enhance the user to share data without sharing it all or just prove simple facts about the data.
There are many great tools and infrastructures that can handle SSI, and Partisia Blockchain’s MPC technology adds a new component to the stack that enables new business models, enhances privacy for the data-driven economy, and will take your project ahead of the competition. So read on if you are a builder of the US$27 billion global digital identity market that is expected to expand at a CAGR of 17.2% from 2023 to 2030.
First things first, digital identity usually revolves around three actors: issuer, holder, and verifier.
The issuer issues verifiable credentials to the holder, and the holder can then present the credentials to a verifier who can verify the content by digital signatures and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) that may be on a blockchain. For most digital identity use cases, DIDs and associated DID documents are the only elements that get on the blockchain. We do not take a deep dive on this in this article.
DIDs and verifiable credentials are some of the essential components that make up digital identity, especially digital identity that works with decentralized networks. DIDs are a type of address that is generated to manage digital signatures, and verifiable credentials are credentials created and issued by any issuer based on their DIDs.
To enable real SSI, the users will have to store all data themselves at first, often in digital identity wallets, and only then will the user be in full control. The data itself can be data inputs from users such as personal Identifiable Information (PII) or digital verifiable credentials issued by a third-party, e.g. KYC provider issues KYC claim as digital verifiable credential. Credentials are often issued and exchanged by an agency that establishes secure peer wise connections.
Multiparty computation (MPC) is a groundbreaking technology that allows multiple data inputs to remain private while still being computed on and only sharing the outputs. The computing itself is carried out by specially selected MPC validator nodes who each compute on secret shares of the data and privacy is guaranteed by cryptography.
Compared to ZK proofs, such as zk-SNARKs, MPC is a game changer that allows computing on any function. This takes digital identity to the next level because it is now not only possible to share data with privacy features, but also carry out decentralized computation on private data and write business logic into private and public smart contracts to orchestrate the process and rules.
As we learned before, ZK proofs are good for simple presentations about specific data, e.g. a verifiable credential issued by an employer can be used to prove to the bank that you earn more than US$80,000 a year to qualify for a loan without revealing the exact amount you earn.
Now imagine that we need to compute statistics on multiple inputs from multiple users and compare a single person’s salary to the average, all while preserving privacy. ZK proofs cannot handle general computations on multiple inputs and comparison is limited to two users presenting against each other, so another system would have to support it. This is where Partisia Blockchain’s MPC comes to save the day! MPC on Partisia Blockchain can handle multiple inputs and preserve the privacy while carrying out efficient general computation.
Even though all smart contracts and data can be private, it is often worth considering only to push the most sensitive data and operations into private computation because it is generally more expensive than public computation. This goes for all ZK technology. For instance, if you want to calculate the average salary of employees, you might consider just the salary as private inputs plus pseudonymized identity, and then do statistical calculations in the public space.
When we look at DID/SSI solutions, the business requirements of the implementation usually go past simple verification of ID. DID/SSI proof is just the first step. The real challenge is what other data do you need after the verification. Perhaps it is to verify that this person has proper credentials for accessing a system. Or another popular use case for DID is to verify a user has enough assets to pay for something without revealing their total asset holding. Another app that is looking to build on our system is trying to create a persona on-chain, which advertisers can target, without revealing personal information about the user themselves.
In all these use cases, a simple proof system becomes too expensive and slow due to the fact that each individual parameter must require a proof. When you have 10 users, maybe this is possible. But what happens when you need to scale to 1000 or 10,000 users? And proofs are not computations. It is unable to compute the various different private data for analysis.
This is where MPC can extend the functionality of DID/SSI to create multi-functional applications. Through MPC you can both prove and compute multiple parameters in a single computation and include all the additional business requirements while keeping the data private.
During the 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. Zk 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.
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July has brought remarkable progress and achievements to Partisia Blockchain! We are thrilled to share the latest developments in our dynamic ecosystem. In July, we unveiled our Grants Program for the second half of 2023, empowering visionary builders in the blockchain space with up to 3 million $MPC tokens. These pioneering teams will have access to cutting-edge technology and infrastructure, unlocking new possibilities in decentralized applications. Our commitment to driving innovation goes beyond financial aid — we empower those who challenge the status quo. Join us as we explore the exciting developments in our ecosystem, reflect on our impactful presence at EthCC, and delve into the tech highlights that pave the way for a more robust and user-friendly Partisia Blockchain.
Partisia Blockchain Foundation was thrilled to reveal our Grants Program for the second half of 2023, offering up to 3 million $MPC tokens (valued at US$1.2 million as of today) to pioneering builders in the blockchain space. We are seeking teams determined to create unique solutions that surpass current blockchain limitations. With our support, these projects will have access to cutting-edge technology and infrastructure to bring their groundbreaking ideas to life, addressing challenges previously considered impossible on other chains. Our commitment to driving innovation extends beyond financial aid, as we commit to empower teams that stand out and revolutionize the possibilities of decentralized applications. You can check out our value proposition and read the grant guidelines to apply now!
The Partisia Blockchain team was also thrilled to participate in EthCC conference in Paris in July, where we celebrated collaboration, strengthened partnerships, and reconnected with blockchain friends. Thanks to EthCC for providing a valuable platform for us to showcase our innovative technology, enabling secure collaboration while preserving privacy through advanced Multiparty Computation (MPC). We hope to see more of you next year.
As adoption is one of the main focuses for us, we kicked off a new adoptions team creation with a meeting in Aarhus. All the adoption officers were brought together to align on our strategy and goals for this year. Some of the key areas we agreed to focus on were in metrics, (number of leads from various sources, percentage of conversion, effective marketing campaigns, etc) to understand better where we are doing well and where we need to improve on.
Talking about adoptions, we are also happy to introduce another amazing project that has signed on to build on Partisia Blockchain. Veric is a credential and asset oracle running on Harmony One and they will begin to integrate Partisia Blockchain’s privacy technology to add additional functionality to their application. By adding the privacy layer, they aim to privatize details of their assets that they are looking to use for payment.
We were also honored to participate in this year’s University of Geneva “SDG Summer School”. The focus this year was “Open Source Health Solutions” and students from across the world met during three weeks on the ground and online. We had the pleasure of coaching a group of young minds looking to solve a technological problem for a healthcare company. The innovative solution the students came up with uses MPC and blockchain technologies and could have a positive impact on women’s health.
In line with our Ecosystem Focus, we were excited to showcase SecondLane, a groundbreaking project co-founded by key players in the Web3 OTC market. Offering advanced technology and licensing expertise, SecondLane is building on Weezi empowers project teams, advisors, and investors to unlock liquidity for unvested tokens and equity, while also facilitating the discovery and trading of illiquid digital assets. Explore SecondLane’s unique features in our guest blog, and join us for an insightful Q&A discussion with Oleg Ivanov, Co-Founder of Weezi/SecondLane, to gain exclusive insights into the platform.
As we reflect on the exciting developments in July, Partisia Blockchain has been busy pushing the boundaries of our technology and infrastructure. Here are some of the key highlights from our roadmap.
With these exciting developments, we are paving the way for a more robust and user-friendly Partisia Blockchain. As we move forward, our team is eager to reveal more groundbreaking tech updates next month. Thanks again to our community and your continued support!
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Partisia Blockchain Foundation is happy to announce our grants program for the second half of 2023. We are giving out up to 3 million $MPC tokens (valued at US$1.2 million from last years public sale price of 40¢ a token) to builders that want to create something unique in the blockchain space. Something that is not possible on any other chain.
Partisia Blockchain is the worlds first blockchain that combines a generic programing language to enable a customizable secure multiparty computation (sMPC) solution into an interoperable and scalable blockchain.
Unlike other privacy blockchains that do zero knowledge proof, or only a specific MPC function, Partisia Blockchain’s research based sMPC allows for customizable solutions to fit your specific needs. With features that allow for solutions to be regulatory compliant (such as GDPR, HIPAA, etc), and fully auditable, Partisia Blockchain allows for the solution to solve problems in many use cases.
Our ecosystem is full of unique real world projects that are unique in the blockchain space. From solving for MEV attacks, tackling tender corruption in the public domain, to meeting CSRD compliancy, privatizing DAO voting to ensure integrity of the vote, our partners are not building yet another same type of application in other blockchains. And this is where we want you to come in to build something unique, something not seen in the industry.
Our grant guidelines are here, but mainly we are looking for teams that really want to create a unique solution that cannot be solved in other blockchains. We provide the infrastructure and the technology to bring these solutions to life. We are looking for teams that are really looking to stand out from other dApps, or solve for a problem that is currently not possible in other blockchains.
If you already have an existing app, you dont have to port your existing app over into our blockchain to take advantage of our MPC tchnology. You can use our MPC-as-a-Service model to request the computation as a service. Our interoperability model allows for other tokens (Eth, BNB, Polygon USDC, with more to come) to be spendable as gas on our chain, allowing flexibility to existing applications to take advantage of our technology as well.
What is your unique idea? What are some of the problems you have not been able to solve in the blockchain space? Do you want to create something unique to stand out from all the other similar dApps that do the same thing?
Lets build something different together!
Stay updated:
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At present, it requires a fair amount of technology knowledge to build and support a node in PBC. While many who do not have a technology background have been able to build and maintain nodes, it still creates a barrier that many individuals or organizations feel hesitant to cross. The other challenge is the current staking and job association process. Because the staked MPC tokens in a node are being used as collateral for all the types of jobs the node is running, unstaking and unassociating tokens that are being used can be a challenge.
This is why we are putting focus on implementing a simpler node setup and operations process. This will allow easier setup of nodes as well as easier associating and dissociating of your tokens.
These new features will be rolled out in phases, with the first one being automatic node registration. A simplified registration process will be rolled out where just the configs on your node will kickstart the KYC/KYB and the registration process.
Second phase of the project will be to simplify the association and dissociation of your staked tokens. It will all be a part of our “Staking 2.0” model, which will look to make it easier and less restrictive for both node operators and delegated stakers to manage their stakes.
Running a node will still require some level of technical skill. We hope by automating some of the process, it will make it less confusing and easier for the registration process.
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As we continue to see development occurring on our blockchain, we are always on the lookout for feedback on how to improve our platform, either to make it easier for developers to develop on, or to add new functionalities to help improve the product offering by the teams developing on our chain.
In the last 6 months we’ve been listening to the developers and have been working on various new functionalities and features that should help improve the quality and functionality of the projects. Some of them came in the form of development tools which we reviewed last week.
In this article, we will review the new feature sets that are upcoming to help developers improve upon the existing features or add new functionalities.
Some of these features will also create new use cases for the MPC tokens
Improvements in the PBC as a Second Layer Functionality
One of our main value propositions is our cross-chain bridge (Hermes). This unique bridge and gas payment system allows other chains to be a usable asset in Partisia Blockchain. It is this bridge that allows other chains to call our MPC technology as a service and pay for it using their native coins. But at the moment the data that is transferred is through manual data attestation, and the transfer only occurs in one way (PBC -> EVM).
By implementing BYOC messages to be supportable, we will now implement a two way communication system. This allows for the smart contract writer to hook events that are happening in the EVM back to PBC. Through adding a MPC powered threshold key and tying our oracle servers to collateralize these data through MPC tokens, developers will now be able to create an automated bidirectional flow of data between the EVM and PBC. This opens up additional functionality, such as adding message information in NFTs and allowing them to be transferable cross chain, or sending and receiving of data during the actual bridging transfers.
Staking as an Insurance
Currently, once the funds inside a smart contract runs out, the contract gets deleted. We will be creating a new method to allow for SC owners to stake their MPC tokens as insurance to allow for these smart contracts to continue to live on even if the funds run out of the contract. This will allow for both a safety mechanism in the event funds do run out and also introduce another use for MPC tokens.
ZK Contract Lifetime Beyond 28 Days
Currently the data in a ZK contract lasts for 28 days. Going forward, we will introduce a way to allow for this data to be extendable to go past the 28 days through staking MPC tokens and re-funding the smart contract.
ZK Computation in Batches
This feature will allow for multiple ZK computations to be batchable so that you do not have to execute each and every computation one at a time.
Allow ZK Contracts to Control User Data
Currently the developers writing ZK smart contracts do not have flexible control of the Zero Knowledge data. Through this feature, we will allow for developers to have greater control of the type of data and the control of how the data will be used.
We hope that the above will both help improve the speed in which development can be done as well as allow for new features to be implementable by the developers.
As each of the items complete, we will make a separate announcement in our development channels.
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Bitcoin is what started it all. The coin that began the blockchain industry and even over 14 years after its initial creation, and after so many new coins trying to improve upon the original, it still stands as the king of crypto currency. It is still the main form used as payment in the blockchain industry and others are either built as bringing functionality more than being a currency or is relegated as 2nd place at best.
As mentioned in our interoperability article, the current blockchain L1 ecosystem are basically in a zero sum game. Every chain is trying to be faster, cheaper, more secure and easier to build on. And each blockchain operates by using their own native coin for their transaction fees. And as DeFi came into the picture, DEX’s began looking for options to allow for swapping between chains that were not native to itself. Enter wrapped tokens.
Currently in the DeFi ecosystem, there is only one way to trade BTC. By creating a wrapped version of itself. Whether its wBTC, HBTC or renBTC, etc, it is basically all a similar form of custodying a BTC and minting an IOU type mirror token on the native network. When the smart contract holding the mirror coin is burned, then the locked, or custodied real bitcoin is released. One of the problem in this system is that you must give trust to the custodians. Not only does this go against the trustless-system ethos of public blockchains, if something happens to the custodians (hack, out of business, etc) then your wrapped tokens could be lost or become worthless.
While Partisia Blockchain can implement wrapped bitcoin as BYOC asset easily, this fundamental architecture of wrapped bitcoin tied to a custody goes against the principles of allowing native coins to be used as a form of transaction payment in the blockchain. As mentioned above, from price parity between real and wrapped BTC, to security issues raised by using a custodian (corruption or even worse, a hack in the custody system) there were too many compromises. And so we are taking the road less traveled and working toward finding a solution to allow for native bitcoin to be usable as an asset in the Partisia Blockchain.
This means we are creating a multi-phase program to build this road. The first phase will be a research phase. We’ve already begun this effort and hope to complete it in the next few months. Once the research is complete, we will know the effort needed and then will engage in an architecture and engineering sessions to plan out the work to accomplish this.
This has some major possible benefits. From allowing users to spend native BTC as gas transactions for applications built on the Partisia Blockchain, to creating a native token swap between BTC and another BYOC chain, or even helping to scale transactions in the bitcoin network, implementing native BTC directly in the Partisia Blockchain network will open up new possibilities in the blockchain industry as a whole.
Please be on the lookout for future news of the results of this research.
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Currently our MPC protocol (called REAL) computes binary protocols, but we are going to add an arithmetic protocol in the not too distant future. The “binary” or “arithmetic” property of a protocol is not an indication of what is possible, but rather what is efficient.
Every MPC protocol operates on units of some type, and all applications using MPC are built using a very very small set of operations on this type. Some types are better at some applications than others, which motivates supporting protocols that operate on different unit types.
In binary REAL, the “unit type” is a bit; that is, a number that is either 0 or 1. The only operations we can perform on these bits are exclusive or and conjunction (or XOR and AND). All other protocols have to be built using one or more bits, and a combination of XOR and AND operations.
This naturally means that protocols that can be efficiently expressed as a combination of XOR and AND operations, would be efficient in binary REAL. Such operations include comparisons, any kind of bit manipulation, rotations, shifts, and so on.
On the other hand, operations that require a lot of XOR and AND operations, would be in-efficient. For example, additions, subtractions, multiplications and essentially any operation that is “arithmetic” in nature.
In Arithmetic REAL, on the other hand, the “unit type” is a number between 0 and n (for some n) — and the only operations we can perform are addition and multiplication.
Arithmetic REAL therefore performs very well in applications with a lot of arithmetic. That is, a lot of additions, subtractions, multiplications and so on. On the other hand, applications with a lot of non-arithmetic operations are expensive. For example, it is not very easy to compare two numbers, if all you’re allowed to do is add and multiply the two numbers being compared with each other.
Binary REAL, being binary (or boolean) in nature, performs well on applications that are, well, binary in nature. This includes applications such as
Arithmetic REAL, being arithmetic, performs well on arithmetic applications:
By enabling arithmetic computations in Partisia Blockchain, we aim to open up new solutions as well as allow for cheaper and easier implementation of existing ones. From health record analysis to private voting in a massive scale, we hope to achieve a much wider acceptance of MPC as a perfect solution to enabling computation while protecting individual users’ privacy.
Be on the lookout for this sometime in the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2023.
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Guest Blog by Oleg Ivanov, Co-Founder of Weezi/Secondlane.
SecondLane is co-founded by top players in the Web3 OTC market, combining advanced tech, licensing and historical business volume in the secondary market.
With SecondLane project teams, advisors and investors can now:
Or
The technology stack has been built over the past two years with Weezi team, who now migrated full-time to SecondLane.
There are six essential features that are gradually being automated and released by the team. Each of these features represents the steps of a typical OTC deal.
Such features are bundled into three versions of the SecondLane platform, with SecondLane V1 up and running on EVM-compatible chains.
We are honored to be trusted by Partisia Blockchain to integrate the Partisia ecosystem’s main characteristics into our SecondLane V2 release.
The core element of SecondLane V2 is automated on-chain onboarding and verification of users and assets. This has to be done in (a) a compliant, and (b) privacy-preserving form; so that buyers and sellers are sure that their information is not known to the public.
Partisia Blockchain’s ZK MPC technology, coupled with the decentralized consensus of oracles, is the right mix of tools for our task.
The innovations set to be introduced by Partisia Blockchain is long awaited in the market, and we at SecondLane are excited to be among the first partners to integrate those into our product for our client base.
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One of the main priorities for any blockchain is adoption. The stronger the base that are developing on the chain, the stronger the chain. And one of the important factors for adoption is the ease of development on a chain. For that purpose, we have been working hard on tools to help developers develop and deploy on our chain.
The below are some of the key frameworks, contracts and libraries that will help developers create amazing applications on our chain which we are planning to release in the next 6 months.
With these tools, we hope we will allow development in our chain to be easier, and we will continue to focus on building new tools to help the development community.
Many of these items will launch as they get completed, with a full completion date of around the end of 4th Quarter.
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One of Partisia Blockchain’s core values is in collaboration. Our belief is that one of the main paths to advancing the further adoption of the blockchain industry is through working together. And this belief is built into our blockchain architecture.
As mentioned in our interoperability article, the current blockchain ecosystem is kind of like going to an amusement park. You can play in an ecosystem but only if you pay using their native token.
Partisia Blockchain’s payment mechanism broke away from this paradigm and designed a tokenomics that uses other chains tokens. We started off with Ethereum, then added Polygon USDC, and then integrated BNB into the chain. Now, we are bringing the ability to onboarding tokens to the community.
With the new Ethereum BYOC Framework, we are enabling the ability for any community developer to submit a proposal to onboard a ERC20 or a BEP20 token of their choice that is running on the respective chains into the Partisia Blockchain bridge. This brings the control of adding a token into the Partisia Blockchain to the public.
How it works:
By enabling this important roadmap item, we bring the control of onboarding any new Eth or BNB based asset into our unique bridge to not only be used as a swappable tokens, but allow it to be usable as gas for transacting in the Partisia Blockchain network. Whether you are a dApp that wants to add privacy services into your existing application, or create a unique DeFi solution on Partisia Blockchain that allows for swift easy swaps between assets while preventing front running and sandwich attacks through MPC, all of the value proposition that Partisia Blockchain offers is now available to any system running in the Etherium, Polygon or BNB chains.
Please look out for this feature being launched sometime in the 3rd/4th quarter.
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The first half of 2023 has been an exciting time for Partisia Blockchain. We have achieved significant milestones and made remarkable progress in the Web3 space. As we look back on the exciting developments, we are thrilled to share our progress with our community and ecosystem partners. We integrated the BNB token into our ecosystem, launched our pricing oracle, explored the synergy between blockchain and sustainability and much more. For an overview of our accomplishments, we invite you to watch our First Half 2023 video review, where our founders give an update on the highlights and progress we have made.
The Partisia Blockchain team had the privilege of attending the renowned Crypto Valley Conference in Rotkreuz in early June. This gathering in our home canton of Zug brought together a diverse range of stakeholders, including our community, esteemed partners, and industry experts. We engaged in insightful discussions centered around emerging trends such as artificial intelligence and privacy.
Last month, our team members gathered in Copenhagen for a strategy meeting to collaborate, strategize, and plan for the rest of 2023. This meeting played a crucial role in bringing us together, aligning our goals, and fueling our drive for excellence in the upcoming months. Our founders also held a successful Quarterly Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) session with our community, where we provided updates on our accomplishments during the first half of the year and the plans ahead. The AMA was a demonstration of our commitment to fostering open communication and collaboration within our growing ecosystem.
June was full of major milestone achievements, with the BNB token now part of the BYOC family. This opens up both additional opportunities for the BNB community into our ecosystem as well as enabling the BNB dApps with our multiparty computation technology. As a part of the implementation, Bruce Ahn, our head of developer relations joined Binance in their AMA to describe what the integration is all about.
We also launched our long awaited pricing oracle for both ETH and BNB tokens. This will allow accurate pricing information for when ETH or BNB tokens are spent as gas in our chain.
The Partisia Blockchain community has been buzzing with excitement and activity, with various initiatives and partnerships making significant strides in the Web3 space. Let’s take a closer look at some of the major achievements and updates from our ecosystem partners.
Kin, the ad free Web3 search engine, kicked off a highly successful airdrop campaign in June. The campaign has been nothing short of remarkable, allowing Kin to reach a wide audience and introduce our project to Web3 enthusiasts around the globe. We are thrilled to see the tremendous growth in the Kin community and excited for what is next.
Another noteworthy achievement comes from Blockchain-Ads, a revolutionary advertising and data solution in the Web3 space. They have successfully deployed their groundbreaking product, the “Web3Cookie,” on the Partisia Blockchain testnet. This innovative data monetization tool empowers everyday internet users, enabling them to generate their own cookie and securely monetize their browsing data while preserving their privacy.
In addition to these achievements, we recently hosted our first exciting livestream on Parti.com, the first Web3 Peer-to-Peer creator economy platform. Brian Gallagher, the Co-Founder of Partisia Blockchain, took the stage and shared his insights into various topics. The livestream covered the BNB token bridge integration, zero knowledge, and decentralized social media. It was an opportunity for the community to gain valuable knowledge and test out the new Parti.com platform.
We were also delighted to announce the commencement of the on-chain distribution of rewards for the fourth quarter (March–May 2023). This quarter’s distribution is our largest to date, with a total of 1,202,224 MPC tokens being paid out to 743 wallets. The progressive nature of the rewards ensures that each quarter brings new opportunities for participants. If you are new to staking, we recommend checking out our guide and instructional video to learn how to stake and get rewarded.
In our ongoing commitment to innovation, Partisia Blockchain continued to shine a spotlight on our Interoperability and Scalability solutions. We explored the potential of our Interoperability solution, which enables seamless collaboration between chains, unlocking endless possibilities. Through the power of Bring Your Own Coin (BYOC), we revolutionize the way transactions are conducted across different chains. To learn more about our Interoperability solution, we invite you to read our article on the challenges in blockchain interoperability and Partisia Blockchain’s solution. Additionally, we hosted an informative Q&A discussion, where our expert team members provided valuable insights.
When it comes to scalability, we ventured into the future of blockchain scalability with our Complete Sharding solution. This cutting-edge solution harnesses the power of real-time finalization and genuine parallel processing of blocks, resulting in remarkable scalability. To gain a deeper understanding of what sets our Complete Sharding solution apart, we encouraged readers to dive into our detailed article and watch our insightful Q&A discussion.
Recognizing the significance of sustainability in the blockchain space, this month, we delved into the impact and importance of sustainable practices. We explored how blockchain technology promotes transparency, accountability, and sustainable practices, highlighting the unique approach of Partisia Blockchain. In a captivating Q&A session, we engaged with Monadi, a platform that manages sustainability data and reporting in compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Together, we explored the intersection of sustainability, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors, and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The discussion shed light on how Monadi, powered by Partisia Blockchain, plans to incorporate these principles into its future sustainability initiatives.
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In the rapidly changing world of blockchain technology, sustainability has emerged as a fundamental driver, shaping the development and implementation of solutions. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles — together with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — provide a roadmap for organizations seeking to make a positive and lasting impact. Partisia Blockchain, a leading next-generation blockchain, recognizes the paramount importance of sustainability and is dedicated to integrating its core operations and initiatives.
“For me, sustainability is all about thinking a step ahead by including derived effects in decision-making. The great thing about ESG and SDG goals is the hard work that has been put into mapping some of the most important goals for the global society. For Partisia Blockchain, these goals function as a “call to action” when prioritizing flagship projects,” says Kurt Nielsen, Partisia Blockchain Co-Founder.
At Partisia Blockchain, sustainability is not just a buzzword, but an integral part of our portfolio. We firmly believe that blockchain technology has the potential to drive positive change and contribute to a sustainable future. Through our range of solutions, we prioritize sustainability and align our projects with ESG and UN SDG goals.
Our commitment to sustainability is also strengthened through strategic partnerships with organizations that share our vision. Let’s explore some of the inspiring collaborations that link sustainability to blockchain technology:
Partisia Blockchain’s partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) addresses critical humanitarian challenges using blockchain technology. By leveraging our solutions, we contribute to ICRC’s efforts in providing aid, protecting human rights, and delivering assistance to those in need. This partnership aligns with multiple SDGs, including SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions).
Health Innovation Exchange is dedicated to improving access to healthcare worldwide. With the introduction of Vorne.ai, HIEx tackles the longstanding challenge of transparency in fundraising. For the first time, Vorne.ai offers not only a simple one-click donation feature, but also transparent value-chain reporting throughout the lifecycle of donated funds. This transformative approach ensures that donors can see the direct impact of their contributions, fostering trust and accountability.
Partisia Blockchain plays a pivotal role in this process by creating a one-to-one match between donations and a stable token. This token is minted, utilized and meticulously tracked to ensure full transparency of the impact each donation makes on the supported cause. By leveraging its technology, Partisia Blockchain ensures that every transaction is secure, transparent and immutable, setting a new standard in the healthcare fundraising sector.
Peter Frandsen, Chief Technology Officer at Partisia Blockchain, says:
“We are honored to partner with the Health Innovation Exchange. Through this collaboration, which commenced in Davos during the World Economic Forum, we reaffirm our commitment to advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our technology not only enhances transparency and accountability in healthcare donations, but also drives significant progress towards achieving the SDGs.”
Partisia Blockchain has joined forces for a strategic partnership with OriginAll, a technology company tackling the humanitarian issue of counterfeit medicine and lack of accountability in remittances and charitable donations. Through the OriginAll Healthies system, powered by Partisia Blockchain’s technology, we are revolutionizing the distribution of funds. Healthies, special tokens, ensure that remittances and donations are used exclusively for their intended purpose, combating counterfeit medicine and fostering transparency in healthcare. This partnership aligns with SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).
Monadi, a sustainability-focused organization, has joined forces with Partisia Blockchain to leverage technology and sustainability expertise to drive positive change. This partnership aims to develop innovative solutions that address pressing environmental and social challenges. By combining Monadi’s sustainability insights with Partisia Blockchain’s cutting-edge technology, we strive to create a more sustainable and resilient future. This partnership aligns with multiple UN SDGs, including SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
Sustainability is a guiding principle at Partisia Blockchain, driving our commitment to create innovative, secure, and scalable solutions. By integrating ESG and UN SDG goals into our projects and forming strategic partnerships, we harness the transformative potential of blockchain technology to address global challenges and promote sustainable development.
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Scalability has been something that architects have been grappling with for many years. In the technology space, being able to scale both vertically (adding capacity) and horizontally (adding instances) has been grappled with in all parts of the technology stack. Do you add more transistors in a CPU or add cores to work together? Do you add more space in a hard drive or add multiple hard drives to work together? Do you build a faster computer, or create a software architecture to use multiple computers in sync?
One thing is for certain however. Scaling vertically has limits. There is only so much CPU, memory, storage you can add to a single system before it runs out of capacity.
Blockchain space is no exception. As adoption grows, so must the ability for a blockchain to handle the additional transaction on chain as a result. And in the blockchain space, we call it TPS (transactions per second) This is a combination of two metrics;
Different blockchains use different architectures to try and achieve faster throughput. For finalization, there are things like probabilistic and deterministic finalization. To achieve a higher number of transactions, blockchains have turned to sharding, and added on different rollup technologies like ZK or optimistic roll ups.
To create the fastest blockchain, you have to first look at what can theoretically be achieved for the above two factors. For the finalization time, the fastest is instant. As soon as the block is created, you want it to be finalized as fast as possible. For the number of transactions in a block, you want to be able to put the number of transactions in a blockchain can handle to be as much as possible. The more transactions you can process at the same time, the faster your chain will be. And all of this needs to be done in a secure manner. So how does Partisia Blockchain handle these two challenges?
For finalization, PBC has implemented a unique consensus model that consists of three parts.
This unique finalization model allows for blocks to be created and finalized in real time with the only limit being the time it takes for the verification signatures to propagate throughout the network. (More info in PBC’s yellow paper section 3.1)
While the term “sharding” has been popularized by blockchain, its actually a term that was coined back in the 1990s, by an online video game company, of all places. During the initial popularization of MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) the company building the game Ultima Online ran into a scalability problem. To solve the problem of scaling out huge worlds for hundreds of thousands of users to interact with, they came up with a database scaling architecture and coined it “Sharding” This sharding architecture caught on and is now actively being used by many different database products, including MySQL, Oracle DB and MSSQL.
Blockchain has borrowed the term but if you look at the general architecture of most blockchains, it does not conform to the general principles of what sharding really means. In blockchain sharding, while blocks may get created in parallel, it still gets appended to the end of a single chain.
Through “speed of light” finalization we tackled the issue of creating finalization instantly. For the transaction per block issue, we looked to architect the sharding model according to the definition of what sharding really is; True parallel processing of data.
Just like how it is in traditional databases, in Partisia Blockchain, each shard is an independent blockchain. And each shard ,or blockchain, is capable of independently creating, validating and confirming a block. This architecture goes back to the original definition of what a shard is and allows for true parallel processing of blocks. And in the event congestion is detected, the system automatically creates a new shard adding additional capacity dynamically. Through this dynamic scalability architecture, Partisia Blockchain can theoretically scale infinitely, only limited by the number of nodes in the blockchain.
By creating a programming language that allows for developers to use MPC in a generic way, Partisia Blockchain Foundation has made the creation of applications that can harness the power of MPC for different use cases a possibility. Partisia has been at the forefront of providing private MPC solutions since 2008. And by layering this technology on top of an interoperable and scalable blockchain, Partisia Blockchain is paving the way for anyone to create blockchain solutions that can balance privacy and transparency to build trust and ensure integrity.
To learn more about different use cases or partner with us for solutions, please visit partisiablockchain.com, check out our Medium articles, development documentations or email us at build@partisiablockchain.com.
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A groundbreaking solution addressing critical challenges and unlocking new opportunities for Binance Coin (BNB) holders, developers and the wider community is live. Partisia Blockchain’s Hermes Bridge now supports BNB and will contribute to further expansion of the BNB ecosystem.
Partisia Blockchain’s secure and scalable privacy solutions, cutting-edge technology and pioneering research are now available to the BNB ecosystem. The latest bridge is in line with the Partisia Blockchain’s goal of building more bridges and adding value to the wider community.
The BNB token bridge affords seamless asset transfers between the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) and Partisia Blockchain networks. BNB holders can bridge their tokens and use them as gas in the PBC chain, unlocking all the value proposition of Partisia Blockchain into the ecosystem. The bridge also grants access for BNB developers to fill a privacy solution gap missing in the BNB ecosystem.
The highest levels of security for BNB tokens throughout the bridging process are guaranteed due to Partisia Blockchain’s state-of-the-art cryptographic protocols and consensus mechanisms. This token bridge prioritizes the protection and trust of BNB users.
The token bridge opens access to Partisia Blockchain’s privacy solutions powered by the generic multiparty computation (MPC) programming language allowing developers to create customized privacy solutions. Through this bridge, BNB developers can add on top of their existing ecosystem a privacy solution and pay for the transaction in PBC using their native BNB tokens. It also opens avenues for cross-chain solutions, enabling developers to create innovative applications that harness the combined power of BSC and Partisia Blockchain without leaving the BNB ecosystem (read more about MPC as a service solution here).
We are confident that the integration of the BNB token bridge with Partisia Blockchain will drive the growth and adoption of BNB tokens, further solidifying its position as a leading player in the blockchain industry.
Stay tuned for upcoming updates and detailed instructions on how to leverage the BNB token bridge with Partisia Blockchain. Join us as we embark on this exciting journey of interconnectivity and innovation.
About Partisia Blockchain Foundation: Partisia Blockchain Foundation brings unparalleled opportunities by empowering privacy-preserving, interoperable and sustainable innovation for fairness and transparency. It fuels the most secure and efficient networks to solve global problems. Distilled with more than 30 years of rigorous research, Partisia Blockchain future-proofs solutions, solves tomorrow’s challenges by powering fair, secure, distribution of benefits. While preserving privacy and confidentiality, it brings accountable, transparent and decentralized governance. Learn more: www.PartisiaBlockchain.com
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Guest blog by Vilma Catani and Radu Pavel, Co-founders of Monadi.
Monadi is a platform for managing sustainability data and reporting in compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This EU-imposed regulation mandates companies to disclose information regarding their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) impacts. With the CSRD set to come into effect in 2024, approximately 50,000 companies in the European Union will be obligated to report their ESG data. Monadi aims to simplify and streamline this process while also leveraging the business opportunities it presents.
Sustainability reporting requires management of a vast amount of data, which is a complex task. Firstly, sustainability data is often scattered throughout various departments and external sources within an organisation. Monadi aims to consolidate all of this data into a unified platform. Secondly, the timeline for achieving sustainability goals can extend for several decades, even as far as 2050. We want to be the go-to solution for managing both short-term and long-term sustainability goals.
Monadi has chosen Partisia Blockchain to help ensure safe, credible, and transparent management of data, enabling comparable results across organisations. Leveraging systems like Multi Party Computing and Zero-Knowledge proofs, Partisia Blockchain offers solutions for data transparency, credibility, and encryption. Given the sensitivity of sustainability data, many companies are reluctant to share it. However, the highly secure solutions offered by Partisia Blockchain provide a game-changing approach for ensuring data protection and privacy.
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is expected to be released by the end of this summer, offering the public access to the first use case: “Male-female pay gap” which adheres to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards and utilises Partisia’s Multi Party Computing (MPC) capabilities to privately collect and calculate the pay gap data between genders within the organisations, which is then added on-chain. The platform also provides dashboards and other features to monitor progress and generate reports ready for CSRD reporting.
In summary, Monadi is an innovative platform for management and reporting of sustainability data for companies operating under the CSRD. By leveraging Partisia Blockchain’s technologies and ensuring data privacy, Monadi offers a solution that simplifies compliance and empowers organisations to progress towards their sustainability goals.
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Website and social channels coming soon…
May was packed with exciting updates and announcements in the Partisia Blockchain ecosystem. We showcased our groundbreaking Random Number Generation (RNG) solution, highlighted impressive projects building on our platform, and launched Parti.com, an innovative launchpad for creators. We extend our thanks to the node operators and community members who participated in voting and congratulate Professor Ivan Damgård for receiving the prestigious Dijkstra Prize.
We also had the privilege of participating in the Cardano EMURGO × DoraHacks Hackathon, where we showcased the potential of MPC technology. Join us as we explore the latest tech updates and advancements in the Partisia Blockchain ecosystem and beyond.
This month, we have had several exciting updates and announcements within the Partisia Blockchain ecosystem. Firstly, we showcased Partisia Blockchain’s groundbreaking Random Number Generation (RNG) solution, which utilizes MPC and smart contracts to ensure secure and unbiased random number generation. With this solution, developers can achieve a high level of security and trust by eliminating biases and predictability.
Partisia Blockchain has also shone a spotlight on its vibrant ecosystem, featuring an array of impressive projects that have chosen to build on our platform. Kin, the Web3 ad-free search engine, disrupts the market with its community-driven approach and commitment to privacy. Blockchain-Ads fills a significant gap, enabling Web3 brands to reach their target audience effectively. eTrusty tackles corruption and enhances transparency in the procurement market. Thousand Faces supports female founders through a reward-based crowdfunding platform, addressing the gender gap in funding. Additionally, MetaNames, a decentralized Domain Name System (DNS), allows users to create human-readable domain names linked to Partisia addresses, smart contracts, social profiles, and IPFS content.
This month also marked the launch of Parti.com, the Insights Network’s innovative launchpad built on the Partisia Blockchain. Parti.com empowers creators by providing Web3 technology and cryptocurrency transactions for content monetization. The platform offers unprecedented control over creative output while enabling creators to earn revenue through self-hosted cryptocurrency. With an inclusive and user-friendly design, Parti.com ensures complete ownership and control of funds, accessible through a straightforward account setup process via Discord or Twitter login.
Next month, we are excited to continue our focus on highlighting our innovative solutions and showcasing the diverse projects thriving within the Partisia Blockchain ecosystem.
We want to extend our thanks to all the dedicated node operators and passionate community members who actively participated in the voting process on the proposals presented by the Partisia Blockchain Foundation’s Council. Your unwavering support is invaluable in shaping the future of Partisia Blockchain. Check out the voting result here.
We also want to give our warmest congratulations to Professor Ivan Damgård, Chief Cryptographer at Partisia, for receiving the prestigious 2023 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing for the groundbreaking paper “Multiparty Unconditionally Secure Protocols,” co-authored by David Chaum and Claude Crepeau. Congratulations to Professor Ivan and the team on this well-deserved honor!
On 23 May 2023, we had the privilege to participate in the Cardano EMURGO × DoraHacks Hackathon, where Jesper Gravgaard, Partisia Blockchain Senior Manager, showcased the immense potential of MPC technology and how our blockchain-as-a-service can revolutionize the Cardano ecosystem. Jesper’s presentation highlighted the advantages of incorporating privacy into existing applications, emphasizing the benefits it brings. You can find the presentation on our YouTube Channel.
We are thrilled to witness the rapid growth of our ecosystem with the addition of new projects building on Partisia Blockchain. Our partners, including Ballotboxx and veric-io, have been making significant progress to contribute to the expansion of our chain. Stay tuned for more exciting ecosystem spotlights in the upcoming month as we continue to foster the growth and development of our vibrant community.
The development team was busy working on many new features in May. Alongside the changes needed for the token vesting change, we deployed:
In June, we will be working on additional functionality for the indexing tool for the browser, working toward bringing online the ETH price oracle in production, as well as moving forward with work on our decentralized exchange.
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Guest blog by Dhruv Malik, Sr Smart Contract Engineer and Gael Bokongo CEO and Co-founder at Muwpay.
Muwpay, founded by an educated and innovation-driven team, is on a mission to dissolve the barriers of cross-chain universes by designing a flexible, interoperable user experience. The team has been developing their pioneering protocol called MUWP (Multi Underlying Wrapped Payment), a multi-token protocol adaptable to a variety of formats such as smart wallets, smart widgets, or SDK.
We are privileged to be trusted by Partisia Blockchain, one of the key players in the blockchain space known for secure and private computation services. This partnership has led to the creation of a smart wallet specific to the Partisia community. Thanks to the technical support and global vision of the Partisia Blockchain Foundation, a secure environment has been established where users can experience cutting-edge solutions. This collaborative approach holds vast potential for the future.
We were thrilled to be interviewed by the Partisia Blockchain team to explain our journey so far on our first partnership with such a significant figure in the blockchain industry. Check it out here.
Muwpay is developing the smart wallet and cross-DEXliquidity aggregator protocol with the aim of:
Thus, we provide full end-to-end wallet as a service for Partisia ecosystem
This will be the cross-native wallet that works as follows:
And then see the benefits of paying instantaneously in stablecoins using multiple denominations and low slippage.
For us, Partisia Blockchain ecosystem’s main characteristics were critical to launching our project on this ecosystem, services such as:
MUWP offers extensive benefits for crypto holders. It streamlines the conversion of tokens, reduces operational risks through secure and private computation services, and decreases gas fees by enabling any token for payment. The shards feature also improves transaction throughput. As such, MUWP enhances the overall cryptocurrency user experience, taking it a notch higher.
Thus, we have been progressing to build the smart contract protocol layer and also the mobile wallet, and are poised to release the beta test version around July. Feel free to follow the website muwpay.com for more information.
Overall, the partnership between Muwpay and Partisia Blockchain, and the innovations they are set to introduce, demonstrates a clear vision for a more efficient, secure, and user-friendly future in the world of blockchain technology.
Guest blog by Parker Duncan and Giorgio Guidett, MetaNames Co-Founders.
MetaNames is a decentralized Domain Name System (DNS) built on top of the Partisia blockchain. MetaNames enables users to create human-readable domain names that are linked to Partisia addresses, smart contracts, user socials and IPFS content.
MetaNames simplifies the process of interacting with the blockchain. Instead of using long, complex hexadecimal addresses for transactions, MetaNames allows users to use short and easily recognizable domain names, just like traditional domain names on the internet.
The key benefits of MetaNames include:
Moreover, MetaNames brings fresh air to the NS ecosystem by leveraging Partisia features such as privacy-preserving contracts and BYOC logic:
Check out our roadmap below:
MetaNames aims not just to provide a base and core chain infrastructure but to fully leverage Partisia Blockchain’s innovative technology to improve the current NS industry.
Stay tuned for more, and keep up to date with us by following our Twitter!
Guest blog from Moojan Asghari, Thousand Faces Co-founder and CEO
Thousand Faces is a reward-based crowdfunding platform powered by Partisia Blockchain. It aims to address funding gaps and support impact-driven female founders. With only 1.9% of venture capital funding allocated to all-female founding teams, there is a huge gender gap in funding.
While women currently make just 30% of climate-related decisions, they have proven to excel in building sustainable businesses, resulting in organizations led by women being 2.5 times more profitable. Recognizing the significance of funding more women and providing them with leadership opportunities, Thousand Faces seeks to democratize funding for women and minorities by offering both financial resources and a powerful network.
Driven by the frustration of limited funding and support for underrepresented groups, we embarked on a mission to leverage the principles of Web3, namely transparency, ownership, and decentralization, to serve both people and the planet. The lack of inclusivity in investment decisions, particularly regarding women and minority-led ventures, poses a significant challenge. Research shows that unconscious bias often leads investors to favor individuals who resemble themselves, perpetuating the underfunding of women and minorities. To address this issue, Thousand Faces turned to the powerful capabilities of Partisia Blockchain.
Partisia Blockchain introduces an innovative approach to tackle this problem through its zero-knowledge and voting mechanisms. Leveraging the secure content and zero-knowledge voting developed by Partisia Blockchain, Thousand Faces is building a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). This empowers the creation of an inclusive and transparent voting system that ensures the active participation of a diverse community.
The voting system operates at two levels. Firstly, a diverse jury panel plays a crucial role in the initial voting stage, utilizing the zero-knowledge bootstrapping of Partisia Blockchain to ensure process security. Additionally, a committee-based second level of voting includes the entire community, consisting of token holders and NFT members. This approach guarantees that community members, who act as funders and supporters, have a voice in selecting projects and monitoring their progress.
Thousand Faces has already launched its first membership and NFT collection, available on the website for interested individuals to explore and apply for private sales. You can apply to join the Thousand Faces membership on the allowlist here. The platform has also established a dedicated member’s board and successfully completed its inaugural acceleration program for female founders. We received over 200 applications from nearly 80 countries, aligning with diverse UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From Kenya, Nigeria, Germany, Lebanon, Singapore, and the UK, six outstanding projects reached the final round. At the awards ceremony in April, the top three were granted US$30,000, with support from sponsors including Sandbox and the World of Women Foundation.
To stay updated on our latest developments and join us on our exciting journey, follow us on Twitter or visit our website. We’re excited to be part of the Partisia Blockchain ecosystem and are fully committed to transforming the inclusivity in the web3 space and beyond.
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