August has been a busy month of success! Let’s dive into this month’s Partisia Blockchain update, exploring various industries to showcase the flexibility and transformative potential of blockchain and multiparty computation (MPC). From revolutionizing government processes with transparency and security to redefining data-sharing in marketing and advertising, while prioritizing privacy, our solutions continue to drive innovation.
The healthcare sector witnesses privacy-preserved collaboration and supply chain efficiency, while logistics embraces streamlined supply chain management through blockchain and MPC integration. In the community sphere, we have explored Self-Sovereign Identity’s (SSI) elevated privacy with MPC and tackled GDPR compliance through anonymization. The spotlight on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) broadened our understanding of blockchain possibilities. We hosted an insightful MPC Advantages Q&A session, and our dynamic community engaged in a Web3 marketing discussion — Hivemind Huddles.
Technical advancements include operational smart contracts for DID and verifiable credentials, BYOC framework deployment, and browser updates. As we power ahead, we eagerly anticipate unveiling the BYOC framework in more detail and introducing even more streamlined management features. Stay updated with another month of innovation and progress!
In this month’s recap, we have explored our Industry Spotlight and how Partisia Blockchain’s solutions benefit diverse sectors, including Government, Marketing and Advertising, Healthcare and Logistics. Our journey through these industries showcases the versatile applications of blockchain and Multiparty Computation (MPC), each tailored to address specific challenges while upholding privacy, security and efficiency.
Within the domain of government, Partisia Blockchain envisions transformative solutions that embrace the principles of transparency, security and efficiency. By harnessing the power of blockchain and multiparty computation (MPC), bureaucratic processes can be streamlined while maintaining the confidentiality of sensitive information. Initiatives, such as DelNorte and E-Trusty, exemplify how blockchain can enhance trust in public institutions, create transparency in public tenders, and uphold privacy in CBDCs and blockchain-based voting systems.
In the dynamic landscape of marketing and advertising, Partisia Blockchain revolutionizes data-sharing models. With our privacy-first approach and secure MPC technology, users gain ownership and control over their data. The combination of blockchain and MPC empowers data analytics companies to compute on encrypted data without compromising its privacy, rewarding users for data contribution, ensuring real-time data access, and maintaining transparency. Partisia Blockchain bridges the gap between consumer privacy concerns and data-driven marketing strategies.
In the domain of healthcare, Partisia Blockchain leads the charge in preserving privacy while fostering collaboration and innovation. Our MPC technology introduces secure data analysis without exposing raw information. In the realm of DNA sequencing, Partisia Blockchain ensures the security of genetic data. In clinical research, MPC empowers cross-institutional studies while safeguarding patient privacy. Supply chain management witnesses a transformation, enabling stakeholders to manage complex supply networks without revealing proprietary information. In clinical trial recruitment, MPC facilitates efficient participant matching while upholding data security and privacy. Partisia Blockchain redefines healthcare through the lens of privacy, security, and collaboration.
Lastly, we explored the impact of our solution on the logistics industry, envisioning a streamlined future where blockchain and multiparty computation (MPC) converge to enhance supply chain management. By integrating QR codes with tokenized product representations, we facilitated instant information access and reduced confusion. Blockchain’s transparent touchpoints improved logistics and supply chain transparency, while smart contracts automated processes and adapted to evolving documentation requirements. In the realm of quality assurance, we harnessed MPC and blockchain to digitize supply chains, ensuring privacy preservation and selective data access. Our solutions streamline documentation, upheld compliance with GxP regulations, and heighten efficiency throughout the supply chain, ultimately paving the way for a resilient and transparent industry transformation.
In this month’s community update, we highlighted the transformative impact of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) and Digital ID solutions within today’s dynamic data landscape. Partisia Blockchain’s MPC technology introduces an innovative dimension to SSI, elevating privacy levels and unveiling novel business models. Crucial to the foundation of digital identity, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials empowered users with data control capabilities. Expanding the horizons of SSI, multiparty computation (MPC) enabled confidential data analytics and versatile multi-functional applications.
Additionally, Partisia Blockchain discovered its vital role in facilitating GDPR compliance through the strategic application of multiparty computation (MPC) technology. The utilization of MPC ensured the anonymization of personal data, allowing for uninterrupted data collection while maintaining privacy. This decentralized MPC approach elevates data security and control, in alignment with the access and erasure rights mandated by GDPR. Additionally, our groundbreaking jurisdiction management v1.0 provides an innovative solution for geographically aligned data processing, effectively safeguarding data rights and privacy. As the significance of data privacy continues to grow, Partisia Blockchain remains at the forefront, pioneering technological solutions that enhance privacy, security, and adherence to regulatory standards.
Continuing our exploration of innovative developments, this month, we delved into Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) and their impact on the blockchain landscape. At the core of any blockchain lies the concept of consensus without reliance on a central authority. Programmable blockchains have opened the door to a realm of possibilities, with applications categorized into three types: public input-public output, private input-public output, and private input-private output.
To provide a better understanding of the topic, we held a special MPC Advantages Q&A session, featuring Partisia Blockchain’s Principal Architect Emil Orloff, Cryptographic Scientist Anders Dalskov, and Head of Developer Relations Bruce Ahn. This insightful session delved into what MPC is, and how we differ from other privacy and MPC-based blockchains. To learn more about this topic and where Partisia Blockchain fits in, check out our blog post and comparison chart here.
On 10 August 2023, our vibrant community came together once again for an engaging Hivemind Huddle. This interactive session delved into the realm of Web3 marketing, exploring both the broader landscape and Partisia Blockchain’s unique strategies. Our conversation spanned across past successes like PR efforts, conferences, and media coverage, while also delving into intriguing future prospects (without divulging specifics). It was a great conversation where the community contributed with great ideas, some of which will be directly implemented through the Ambassador Program.
DelNorte, the latest project integrated into the Partisia Blockchain ecosystem, achieved a significant milestone in the past week. It successfully completed the initial transactions for its inaugural real estate deed pilot project, in collaboration with the El Salvadoran government. Additionally, DelNorte has three more pilot projects in the pipeline, each partnering with different governments. This achievement marks a crucial step forward, with El Salvador’s participation serving as the pioneering proof of concept for these initiatives.
Veric has achieved significant advancements, successfully implementing fully operational smart contracts for DID and verifiable credentials on the testnet. The team is currently enhancing privacy features and making necessary preparations for the upcoming mainnet launch, including the facilitation of user onboarding processes.
Progress is being made to our next BYOC asset, Cardano’s ADA token. Currently work is ongoing and we hope to introduce ADA as a BYOC asset in the future.
We increased the number of leads for partnership in the month of August. We are busy working through them and akin to the two we mentioned above, we hope to continue this trend and be able to show the continued interest on our chain.
We deployed the code to support one of our flagship roadmap items, the BYOC framework. Soon we will introduce this feature in more detail with instructions on how you can submit a token to be a bridgeable asset in Partisia Blockchain.
We have also been busy with updates to our browser to include transaction details, indexing and the ability to deploy contracts. Work is not done however and we will continue to push updates to both migrate functionality currently in the dashboard as well as other key features and functions to ease management of your tokens.
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When planning a supply chain from a logistics perspective, it is often useful to conduct a little thought experiment and think of yourself in the position of the products involved. In order to do this, you should “be the box” and trace each step you take from the factory to your customer, how much time you need to arrive and all of the steps you need to go through to get there. Let’s say you are a product, a piece of machinery made in a factory in Pennsylvania, United States. Post-production, you need to be packaged a certain way and the relevant paperwork prepared for export and import to the client’s destination, e.g., Germany. For this purpose, export and import documentation need to be prepared, product specification sheets, customs declaration forms, etc. Before “leaving” the factory you need to be packaged and the documentation needs to be prepared and added to the packaging. You are then picked up by a courier, who potentially needs a copy of certain documentation, and brought to a storage/sorting facility. You need to be marked clearly beforehand or afterwards in order to insure you are not confused with another piece of machinery. Then when ordered by a client, you may need to be re-packaged, for which the necessary documentation needs to be available to the courier before being shipped out. You are then picked up by a logistics company, either the same as the one the courier was from, or another one, and transported to where you will be exported. This is one of two places where all of the paperwork has to be in order, as customs officials now could inspect the paperwork and potentially block or delay your export. Customs declaration forms, material safety data sheets, shipment listings, the invoice to the client, etc., all need to be available and correct.
Congratulations, you have passed customs and are now in “international customs limbo”. After being “exported” you are usually transferred to a toll-free storage area and are then sorted into a container or loaded onto an airplane. When you do land, let’s say in Germany, the customs officials will want the same, or even different paperwork — perhaps even the same paperwork but in a slightly different format (I cannot emphasize enough how sensitive managing customs can be). VAT and other import taxes are (or are not) charged based on the required product declaration, which can sometimes differ greatly between countries, and the purpose of use. The product (you) is then released to a logistics company that sends you to your customer’s address. Hurray, you have arrived at your destination!
What this thought experiment shows us, is that during every single one of these steps, there are multiple touchpoints with many different people involved. Each one of these touchpoints represents a moment where a variety of things could go wrong. What if one of the documents falls off the package? What if one of the logistics employees accidentally confuses one of the packages during re-packing at the storage facility, or confuses the documentation? While logistics companies tend to have contingencies and redundancies, things sometimes go wrong causing unnecessary delays in supply chains and, in some cases, lost business.
Blockchain could be used to mitigate such logistics risks: a QR code representing a tokenization of a product could be added to each individual product package, in order to provide information on each individual product instantly and reduce the potential for confusion. Paperwork could be added to these product’s QR codes making them easily accessible to different parties along the supply chain and could also help in compiling different documents. If used correctly, a blockchain could also help keep track of shipments, both internally for logistics companies and externally for those managing supply chains. Sometimes shipments can be a bit like a black box and yes, sometimes products even get “lost”.
Furthermore, not only could documentation be made more accessible, but smart contracts could be created to streamline processes and e.g., create country-specific documentation automatically depending on where the product’s QR code is scanned. This could particularly come in handy if a product’s route is changed short notice, the product is checked by another country’s customs (e.g., another EU port of entry that wants things just ever so slightly differently) or the documentation required is changed at some point. The transparency provided by the blockchain could also make different actors such as customs authorities and/or logistics companies more accountable and provide a better basis for auditing/compliance. Furthermore, payment processes e.g., for VAT and other taxes, could potentially be automated, greatly increasing the speed of the customs clearing process.
The complexity of a supply chain increases with the added burden of quality assurance requirements, laid out by e.g., pharmaceutical GxP (Good practice, the “x” standing for a variety of different areas) regulations. Medical and pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic products require differing levels of traceability and quality assurance from the initial ingredients all the way to the patient. Each step in the production, testing, manufacturing, and distribution needs to be carefully and extensively documented and regarding logistics, the regulation laid out for e.g., pharmaceuticals is that of “Good Distribution Practice” (GDP). If you take the example of an agriculturally derived ingredient for a medicine, the process would be as follows:
A plant is harvested following (and documenting everything) according to Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) or Good Agricultural and Collection Practice (GACP) and then processed (e.g., the relevant ingredients extracted) according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and tested to Good Laboratory Practice (GLP). The product is then sent, of course following Good Distribution Practice (GDP), to the production facility, where it is further processed and combined with other ingredients to make a final product (under GMP) and then distributed to a pharmacy (again under GDP). Every individual production, testing and transportation step of each individual ingredient is meticulously documented and requires the ability to be audited by different parties as well as government entities. The idea being, that GxPs can assure two things for quality assurance quickly: 1) the assurance of quality of medical products on the market and 2) the ability to trace exactly where something went wrong in a pharmaceutical supply chain if there is some sort of defect. This all undoubtedly brings with it an immense amount of documentation, often in paper format, that needs to be stored for years by each individual party. Not exactly the most efficient way to store or audit a supply chain.
Both regarding the GxP traceability and less-regulated supply chains, blockchain technology could be used to reduce errors, streamline processes, facilitate documentation availability, and allow for better traceability and auditability for all parties involved. However, companies have legitimate reasons not to want to reveal certain information about their supply chains. A pharmaceutical company for example may not want to reveal the source of their ingredients, as a competitor may use that information to their advantage. This is where MPC could come in and be used to obfuscate certain sensitive information about the supply chain. Moreover, necessary documentation could only be made available to certain parties, such as customs authorities.
An MPC-blockchain solution built on Partisia Blockchain for logistics and quality assurance could look as follows: each step set out by GxP could be documented and listed on the blockchain, while only making the source of each documentation available to the parties necessary (e.g., a regulatory body of a manufacturing company). Each package shipped could be traced transparently by the customer, with a smart contract automatically generating documentation for each individual step in the supply chain and customs touchpoint. All of this can be done without revealing too much information to parties that do not need to have the full picture. Such a system could reduce errors, increase efficiency, allow for better auditability and more transparency of supply chains — while MPC keeps valuable trade secrets private.
Partisia Blockchain is dedicated to facilitating innovative solutions to real-life problems. Better supply chain and quality assurance are two of these problems.
Please contact us, if you have any questions about how our technology could improve your supply chain management or quality assurance.
Contact information: build@partisiablockchain.com
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In today’s context, the healthcare sector by itself contributes to around 30% of the global data volume, while the pharmaceutical industry significantly adds to this data generation. Handling and utilizing data from these sectors are also subject to some of the strictest regulations due to the nature of data that often includes personally identifiable information. GDPR, internal policies, and other regulatory frameworks pose tough challenges when data is collected or shared beyond isolated data silos for analytical purposes.
Public and private blockchains serve as effective tools for maintaining an immutable and transparent log of transactions, which can be relied upon and examined by various stakeholders such as public authorities. However, when it comes to the actual manipulation and processing data, both public permissionless blockchains and private blockchains are insufficient due to the lack of privacy features. This is where Partisia Blockchains’ distinctive and proprietary secure multiparty computation (MPC) technology emerges as exceptionally valuable
Our MPC technology empowers individuals and organizations to preserve privacy right from the input stage. This entails breaking down data into many encrypted secrets, which are then shared with specialized MPC network nodes. Critically, these nodes remain unaware of the specific content they store or compute on. Predetermined private and public smart contracts establish protocols for computations and determine access privileges to the outcomes, as authorized by permissions.
The potential applications for private computations within the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors are virtually limitless. In this article, we will explore some of the extensively discussed scenarios.
Privacy technologies play a pivotal role in enhancing the security and confidentiality of private DNA sequencing. With the advancements of genetic analysis techniques, individuals are increasingly seeking to unlock insights from their genomic data, but the sensitive nature of genetic information demands robust measures to preserve privacy. MPC offers solutions by enabling private computations on encrypted genetic data without the need to expose the raw data. This allows for collaborative research, personalized medical insights, and genetic advancements while ensuring that individuals retain control over their sensitive genetic details.
By employing these technologies, private DNA sequencing initiatives can preserve privacy, encourage data sharing for scientific progress, and mitigate the risks associated with unauthorized access or breaches of genetic information.
Traditional data sharing approaches often raise concerns about privacy breaches and data ownership when it comes to the almost abundant amount of sensitive patient information and proprietary research data for healthcare and pharmaceuticals. MPC addresses these challenges by allowing multiple parties to jointly analyze and derive insights from their respective datasets without actually revealing the raw data to each other, but only share valuable outputs.
In the context of clinical research, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare institutions can collaboratively conduct analyses on aggregated datasets while keeping individual patient information and proprietary data secret. This facilitates cross-institutional research without the need to centrally consolidate data, eliminating the risks of data exposure and unauthorized access. Different pharmaceutical companies, each possessing valuable proprietary data, can engage in joint studies without revealing their confidential insights.
This collaborative approach unlocks opportunities for discovering broader trends, identifying potential drug interactions, and conducting large-scale analyses that draw from diverse datasets. By preserving privacy and ownership, MPC encourages cooperation among entities that might have otherwise hesitated due to privacy concerns. In essence, MPC bridges the gap between robust data-driven insights and the need for privacy, fostering a new era of collaborative clinical research across previously isolated data silos and organizations.
MPC offers robust primitives to revolutionize supply chain management within the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. In these sectors, ensuring the integrity, transparency, and security of the supply chain is of all importance, as any inefficiencies or vulnerabilities can have serious consequences for patient safety and product quality.
MPC provides a solution by enabling various stakeholders, including manufacturers, distributors, regulatory bodies, and even healthcare providers, to collaboratively manage the supply chain without revealing sensitive proprietary information to one another. This is particularly valuable when dealing with complex global supply networks involving multiple parties, each with their own data and interests. Parties can jointly verify and validate critical supply chain information, such as the authenticity of raw materials, production processes, transportation routes, and inventory levels.
For example, pharmaceutical companies can verify the authenticity and quality of raw materials supplied by third-party vendors without sharing their precise formulation details. Regulatory agencies can conduct audits and ensure compliance across the supply chain while preserving the confidentiality of manufacturing processes. Healthcare providers can track the provenance of medical devices or drugs to enhance patient safety and prevent counterfeiting.
MPC-driven supply chain management ensures trust among stakeholders by providing a secure environment for collaboration. It prevents fraud, minimizes the risk of data breaches, and streamlines information sharing. By harnessing the power of MPC, the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries can establish a more efficient, transparent, and secure supply chain ecosystem that ultimately benefits patients, regulatory compliance, and business operations alike.
MPC presents a transformative way for streamlining the recruitment process in clinical trials while upholding patient privacy and data security. Clinical trial recruitment often entails the sharing of sensitive patient information across multiple stakeholders, including healthcare providers, research institutions, and pharmaceutical companies. MPC offers an innovative approach by allowing these entities to collaboratively identify eligible participants without revealing individual patient details.
Using MPC, each participant contributes encrypted data, maintaining the confidentiality of their personal information. The parties can collectively perform computations on this encrypted data to match potential participants with specific trial criteria, such as medical history, demographic characteristics, or genetic markers. This process ensures that no party gains access to the raw data of others, mitigating privacy concerns.
MPC technology not only accelerates the participant matching process but also encourages broader collaboration among stakeholders who might otherwise hesitate to share sensitive patient data. This approach streamlines the recruitment process, reduces administrative burden, and respects patients’ privacy rights. Ultimately, MPC revolutionizes clinical trial recruitment by combining efficiency and data security, fostering trust among stakeholders and contributing to the advancement of medical research.
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