The last month of spring was busy as the plans for the second half of the year started taking shape. Team members convened in Aarhus for a strategic workshop. In-person gathering in Central Jutland took the pulse of the current progress to date against the roadmap, outlined the plans for expanding our service offerings with key focuses on DeFi and RWA (real world assets) solutions. Stay tuned for exciting new developments and be the first to know.
The Partisia Blockchain team enjoyed several days of networking and collaboration at the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva. Our community learned more about our innovative solutions for healthcare access, discussing how Partisia Blockchain is advancing SDG3 and supporting this year’s theme, “All for Health, Health for All.”
Co-Founder Peter Frandsen demonstrated the impact of Partisia Blockchain in bringing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to life during his keynote on leveraging blockchain for healthcare access. He also engaged with local press, addressing questions on the intersection of blockchain, innovation, and healthcare, highlighting how Partisia Blockchain is driving transformative solutions in the healthcare sector.
Bruce Ahn, Chief Success Officer, moderated an insightful panel on blockchain’s role in healthcare, wellness, and social impact at WHA77. The discussion highlighted innovative solutions and their potential to transform global health.
The Partisia Blockchain team recently made a significant impact at BlockSplit in Croatia. Our dynamic duo, Shirly Valge and Maria Cocu, were present to share the exciting developments on our horizon. The event provided an invaluable opportunity for days of networking with Web3 startups, developers, researchers, investors, designers, and other innovators from around the globe.
Our Chief of Growth, Shirly Valge, captivated the audience with a powerful keynote on why privacy is needed in Web3 in the growing trend of GDPR and data protection. Her inspiring insights shed light on the crucial role of privacy in the evolving landscape of blockchain technology.
Last but not least, the team was in Warsaw to attend the Next Block Expo, where Shirly took stage to highlight the privacy, interoperability and scalability of blockchains to future-proof the industry. The team also met with our Polish node operators, community members and discussed future ventures with potential partners.
Mark your calendars for 6-7 June 2024. Our Chief of Growth, Shirly Valge, will be at the prestigious Crypto Valley Conference. On Thursday 6 June at 14:00, Shirly will host an insightful workshop focused on integrating privacy and compliance in the blockchain space. This session promises to be a must-attend event for anyone interested in the intersection of privacy, compliance, and innovative blockchain solutions. Stay tuned for more details on our social media.
Partisia Pulse is back! Kurt Nielsen, President of Partisia Blockchain, is featured in the latest edition of this series. Following the launch of the $MPC token, the community has been eager to know what is next. And he was crystal clear: expanding the ecosystem with DeFi and RWA-oriented projects is the target for the rest of the year. “There is more work being done in the background, but these two will be the focus for 2024,” says Kurt in the video. Watch the latest episode here.
Monadi launched their initial testnet version with their mainnet coming in June. Monadi helps companies stay compliant with CSRD regulations by using multiparty computation to compute on company executives’ salaries by gender to ensure they are fair without exposing their individual salaries. Come check them out here.
IDSign received a grant to be the first team to onboard MOCCA (MPC On-Chain Custody Advanced solution) as a solution to protect and provide a customizable custody solution to encrypted documents. MOCCA is not just a custody solution for crypto assets, but all types of digital asset and IDSign is showing the world you can have a decentralized solution for all types of custody challenges.
We were thrilled to see remarkable growth in our AirDrop program throughout May. The community’s participation and enthusiasm have been incredible. Make sure to check out the leaderboard to see where you stand and keep bridging your EVM tokens through the zkCross bridge to climb higher. Exciting rewards await those who stay active and engaged.
Another $MPC rewards quarter is coming to a close. We will distribute more reward tokens to our stakers in June, our largest to date. $MPC2.7 million tokens will be distributed to our stakers who are putting their token to work by securing the network. Learn how your tokens are put to work to secure the world’s data with this quick video.
zkCrossDEX will be launching phase 2 of their project. Their on-ramp system supporting more than 200 fiat currencies alongside their DEX supporting BYOC and MPC20 tokens will be launching mid to end of June. Look for new MPC20 tokens to begin appearing on the DEX soon after the launch.
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by Jesper Buus Nielsen, Chief Cryptographic System Designer
This brief post explains why I believe secure multiparty computation (MPC) is a key technology for creating a better version of the internet and why we founded Partisia Blockchain to unlock its potential.
First, a bit about myself: I am a professor of computer science at Aarhus University in Denmark. For me, MPC and blockchain represent a professional life journey. My PhD thesis in 2003 focused on cryptographic consensus protocols, threshold signature schemes and MPC. Twenty-one years later, these technologies are starting to flourish. Today, they are often known as blockchains, distributed wallets and, well, MPC, and I am still researching them.
If you are reading this post, you probably already know what MPC is. If not, MPC allows multiple servers–each holding private data–to perform computations on the joint dataset without exposing any private data and without revealing anything beyond the computed output. It may sound like magic, but it is just cryptography. For details, see our book here.
I believe MPC has the potential to solve many of the current problems with the internet. The internet was initially envisioned as a space for sharing public information. Instead, it has become a space where we often pour private information into informational black holes, which monetize it in opaque ways, from programmed outrage to influencing voting behavior. You might argue that people should simply stop trading their privacy for trivial rewards. However, when faced with a choice between functionality and privacy, people tend to choose functionality. It is unrealistic to expect this to change, as humans are short-sighted utility optimizers. Fortunately, there is no need to choose between functionality and privacy. MPC demonstrates that you can eat your cake and have it too.
We just need to integrate MPC into everything. Imagine a dream world where using MPC is easy and free. If you wanted to compute on a dataset from several sources, you would simply specify the desired computation in your favorite programming language, indicate where the data is located, compile the code, deploy it, run it. And voilà, the desired result would magically appear where it should, with no leaks. And this process would be as efficient as computing the result on a single computer. Moreover, it would be completely transparent, allowing you to know and control exactly how and when your data was used. Had the internet looked like this from the beginning the way we store and process private data would be completely different, and thousands of new applications would be possible. This does not have to remain a dream world. We can build it, and we should build it!
Two decades ago, I thought researching better MPC protocols would be enough for the world to adopt them. However, implementing and deploying MPC turned out to be more challenging than I anticipated. In 2008, I co-founded Partisia ApS to put MPC into practice. This experience taught me a lot about the real-world challenges of using MPC. For each new use case, we often had to design a new optimized protocol, implement it, and find servers to run it. The hardest part was finding mutually trusted, organizationally separate parties to run the servers and teaching them how to use MPC. While there is still a place for such deployments, it became clear that this approach would not scale if we wanted MPC in everything. If each use case had to bear the cost of developing and implementing a protocol, and if we had to constantly find relevant organizations willing to host the servers, it would not be widely adopted. The solution we came up with was Partisia Blockchain.
Let us look back three decades at how the internet was organized when I was a kid to illustrate why Partisia Blockchain is the way to go. Technologies like FTP, Gopher, Usenet, and Archie technically allowed everything the World Wide Web does today, but there was no dot-com boom. It took Tim Berners-Lee’s 1989 paper, “Information Management: A Proposal”. He rather modestly wanted to improve the way information was shared and managed among researchers at CERN and other institutions. He did not know he had just invented Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo, PayPal, Priceline… And of course he had not. He had invented an incredibly potential enabling technology. There might have been a short window where one boomer got the chance to ask “but what is WWW really useful for?” In fact, I know that guy. He was one of my professors the first year at my university. But it quickly turned out that the answer was “Everything!”
In my opinion, one of the most important developments happened in 1995, where the world saw the first version of the open source Apache web server. Now everyone could contribute to developing the WWW and everyone could almost by a single click install a web server and become an “Internet company”. After that no one looked back. There was no reason to ask what WWW was useful for. Everyone started to build what we have today, bottom up. By the early 2000s, Apache had become the dominant web server, powering over 70% of all websites. Apache was very much the enabler and the workhorse of the dot-com boom in the 1990s. Apache’s influence persists today, where 30% of all web servers still run Apache.
So, that was the question: How do we build the “Apache of MPC”? How do we make it possible for everyone to integrate MPC with a “single click”? Instead of having a few MPC companies pursue use cases, we needed to make the technology seamlessly available to everyone to kickstart the building of the MPC internet bottom up. The MPC equivalents of Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo, PayPal and Priceline would follow. You will build those! Of course, we needed programming languages and compilers to facilitate this. And we needed tools for integrating MPC with the existing internet technology. That is a lot of work, but it is not fundamentally different from building something like Apache. It is software. However, a major obstacle we were left contemplating was the problem of finding servers to run the protocols. This was an organizational problem, not a software problem. The solution we went for was a blockchain organizing staked and vetted organizations and individuals willing to run the MPCs. Servers hosted by blockchain participants can programmatically be scrambled when needed for an MPC: MPC-as-a-service. You can read more about the Partisia Blockchain architecture here [TBA]. Crucially this converted an organizational problem into a software one. And Partisia Blockchain was born.
There is still a lot of work to be done towards the ultimate dream of making MPC as efficient as computing on a single machine. This is one of the problems I focus on as a university researcher. However, in Partisia Blockchain we are now finally implementing a full-stack, single-click solution to integrate MPC into everything. You should join us in building the workhorse of the MPC internet and start integrating MPC into everything. The rest, I hope, will soon be internet history.
For me, blockchain and MPC represent an ongoing professional life journey. In the future I have two main means of transportation for the journey. From my role as a university researcher, I aim to continually develop better MPC protocols. Through Partisia Blockchain, I hope to help create “the Apache of MPC”. It has been a 21-year journey so far. We came a long way, but we also have a long road in front of us. Let us see where we are in 21 years from now. By 2045, I hope that if anyone asks, “But what is MPC really useful for?” the answer will be a bemused, “Everything!!!”, and that Partisia Blockchain is organizing 30% of the world’s MPC servers.
Until then, let’s get to work!
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In April 2024, Partisia Blockchain achieved significant milestones, including forging partnerships with TPC Ventures and announcing our integration of the $MPC token on StakingRewards.com. We were also proud to announce our membership with the Swiss Blockchain Federation and our Ledger integration with the Partisia Blockchain app. Our presence at various events across the globe this month, such as the TEAMZ Web3 Summit and Token2049, showcased our commitment to innovation and collaboration. Let’s explore our ecosystem updates and key features in the press.
This month we announced our partnership with TPC Ventures, a player in the Web3 space, offering venture capital, development, and consulting services. Teaming up with Sensei Node, TPC Ventures brings a wealth of expertise to the table, providing professional validation and adoption services to bolster our network.
StakingRewards.com, a platform dedicated to collecting, ranking, and simplifying the staking process for various protocols, is now integrating the $MPC token. This integration aims to streamline the staking process and spotlight our unique rewarding structure. With over 200,000 monthly visitors, their platform offers a prime opportunity to reach a broader audience and showcase our rewarding model.
Additionally, Moonrig, a platform aspiring to become the leading rating agency in the digital currency industry, is striving to recruit credible research analysts to conduct deeper financial analysis of digital currencies. This endeavor promises to offer better insights to retail investors and contributes significantly to legitimizing the industry. This collaboration marks another significant step towards widespread adoption and recognition.
Now, you can seamlessly access the Partisia Blockchain app on Ledger devices, thanks to the successful completion of the Kudelski audit in March 2024. With Partisia Blockchain’s inclusion in the Ledger App catalog and support on Ledger hardware devices, MPC token holders can securely store, send, and stake their tokens. This collaboration brings together the cutting-edge security of Ledger, a leading hardware wallet provider, with the functionality of Partisia Blockchain, offering users unparalleled peace of mind and convenience. Get started with our easy-to-follow instructions here.
It is with great pride that we share our membership with the Swiss Blockchain Federation. This prestigious membership marks a significant step for Partisia Blockchain as we join forces with other industry leaders to solidify Switzerland’s position as a global blockchain hub. Together, we are committed to fostering a robust legal framework and innovation in the blockchain space.
The Partisia Blockchain team had an eventful week in Dubai, navigating through challenging weather conditions. At Token2049’s Restaking and Infra Day, Bruce Ahn, Head of Adoption, delivered two presentations. He introduced the BYOC blockchain and the programmable custody solution (MOCCA), emphasizing the significance of programmability and interoperability for Web3’s success. Bruce highlighted how these innovations are pivotal in shaping the future landscape of blockchain technology. At the TEAMZ Web3 Summit in Tokyo, our community engaged with the Partisia Blockchain team. Kurt Nielsen, Partisia Blockchain’s President, took center stage, shedding light on Real World Assets (RWA), blockchain adoption, and more in his keynote. Tokyo witnessed insightful discussions throughout the event, including an RWA panel hosted by EMURGO and engaging dialogues spanning various topics. In Estonia, Shirly Valge, Chief of Growth at Partisia Blockchain, recently took the stage at the Banana Conf (formerly NFT Tallinn) to delve deep into key blockchain topics. She led a panel discussion on the transformative power of blockchain in supply chain connectivity, exploring themes such as real-world asset tokenization, and shared invaluable insights on data privacy and artificial intelligence. Ibiza Tech Forum 2024 where the future of technology unfolds against the backdrop of the vibrant Balearic island, was also an event to remember in April 2024. Amidst the bustling atmosphere, global leaders and tech enthusiasts converged, including the Partisia Blockchain team. Shirly Valge took the stage to deliver a keynote on AI and the critical role of Privacy Enhancing Technology, while Maria Cocu, our Community Growth and Engagement Associate, immersed herself in discussions revolving around community expansion and engagement enhancement strategies. Balearic Islands served as the perfect setting for meaningful connections and cutting-edge insights into the tech landscape. Stay tuned for next month as Shirly Valge will be delivering a keynote and workshop at Block Split in Dalmatia during 27–30 May 2024.
Last April witnessed an uptick in publicity with Partisia Blockchain being mentioned in more than a thousand media outlets. A few highlights include Japanese Asahi TV’s news segment focusing on Web3’s growing importance in Japan and featuring our team members at the TEAMZ Web3 Summit in Tokyo. Our co-founder Brian Gallagher delved into the DeFi trends with Mario Nawfal on X Spaces broadcast. Elsewhere Cointelegraph ran a feature on Partisia Blockchain’s differentiators and solutions it offers and it published a piece on our Grants Program. In another television news segment, Denmark’s TV2 interviewed one of our co-founders Peter Frandsen. The Danish television reportage highlights the importance of data security, the Scandinavian country’s efforts in safeguarding against cyberthreats amid ongoing geopolitical volatility and the need for the data security infrastructure. Also in Denmark, the Aarhus University ran a video featurette about multiparty computation with commentary from Ivan Damgård and Peter Frandsen.
In April, we announced that wBTC will be added as a supported BYOC token on our platform. This integration is a significant step forward in enhancing interoperability within the Partisia Blockchain ecosystem. With wBTC support, users will enjoy seamless gas payments and expanded functionality, opening up new possibilities for decentralized finance and asset management.
Phase 1 of the zkCross Network is now live! zkCross, a zero-knowledge-based DEX, has been launched on Partisia Blockchain, paving the way for a seamless cross-chain collateralized DeFi protocol. This initial phase of the launch facilitates asset swapping and bridging into Partisia Blockchain’s BYOC network, with Phase 2 scheduled for early June. Phase 2 will see the rollout of a full-fledged native DEX on our network. For more details on this exciting announcement, read further here. Our AirDrop program is steadily progressing, with additional assets being bridged into the network. Throughout April, we witnessed a steady growth in Total Value Locked (TVL), accompanied by an increase in staked $MPC, bridged assets, and wallet counts. As we look ahead, we anticipate further growth catalyzed by the launch of zkCross and other dApps aimed at fostering increased activity within the chain.
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