New digital era, new demand of security
With the advent of the era of big data, the leakage and abuse of personal privacy data are common, which not only disturbs the normal market order, but also seriously restricts the innovation and development of the digital economy. In recent years, many countries have carried out relevant legislation of digital economy and data governance, which makes the legal requirements of personal privacy data more rigorous, and the supervision system is becoming increasingly strict. The various online scenarios led by the Covid-19 not only bring convenience to our life, but also cause a lot of security demand of data protection
Therefore, the data producers, such as government agencies, operators, platforms, are constantly raising the legal standards of storage, transmission and transaction. It has brought a problem to the data owners: how can fully utilize the data resource endowment to create business profits and social value, meanwhile ensure that the data privacy is protected in accordance with supervision provisions? The real demand behind the problem is bound to give birth to new technologies. The combination of blockchain and secure multi-party computation provides a new solution for breaking the “data island”, ensuring data security and releasing data value.
Recently, as the leader in the global blockchain industry, PlatON has started a new journey in the construction of privacy computation infrastructure, launching the secure multi-party computation ceremony—— Lumino. Lumino aims to create system parameters in a decentralized way, which could help build a real community-based, open-source blockchain ecosystem and ensure the underlying security of the main network and the reliability of future digital applications.
The “chemical reaction” of blockchain and secure multi-party computation
To understand the essence of Lumino, we need to understand the blockchain and secure multi-party computation. Blockchain is a technical solution that does not rely on a third party and a network that stores, verifies, transmits and communicates through its own distributed nodes. The core problems it solves are network decentralization, data consistency and tamper-prevent. Secure multi-party computation is to solve the problem of privacy protection among a group of mutual distrusted participants. It should ensure the independence, correctness decentralization and do not disclose the data to other participants. Secure multi-party computation was firstly proposed by professor Yao Qizhi, who is a Chinese computer scientist and the winner of Turing prize. Since 2010, the development of executable general compiler makes its concept gradually well-known.
It can be seen that both blockchain and multi-party security computation are technologies dealing with data interaction between a group of participants according to specific rules. However, blockchain is mainly used to verify the correctness of the calculation, and the purpose is to achieve the consistent recognition of the results and prevent the results from being tampered with; the purpose of secure multi-party computation (MPC) is to get specific results in the case of data confidentiality, and emphasis on privacy protection in data share situation.
When secure multi-party computation encounters blockchain, the integration has become a technology trend that attracts much attention. Due to the different traits of blockchain and multi-party security computation, they are not exclusive and can complement each other. Blockchain can improve its ability of data confidentiality by using secure multi-party computation to adapt to complex environments; while secure multi-party computation can complete redundant computation with the help of blockchain to obtain verifiable and unique results.
The combination of MPC and blockchain is ultimately to meet the more complex and changeable real needs, especially for various environments of data exchange and sharing. For example, secure multi-party computation can realize key management in the blockchain wallet, and divide the management right of assets reasonably to reduce the risk of single key loss. It can also realize the cross-domain access of EHR data. Based on personal digital identity infrastructure, hospital A could apply for data access to hospital B by obtaining the patient’s authorization, which does not need directly return the patient’s medical record data. It would meet the dual goals of diagnosis needs and privacy protection.
New practice in privacy protection——PlatON & Lumino
Secure multi-party computation is essentially a solution for data security. It is consisted of cryptographic technologies such as obfuscation circuit, secret sharing, homomorphic encryption, etc. PlatON has already realized the layout in these fileds. The key to secure multi-party computation is to use zero knowledge proof to prove that there is no leakage, which is also the key to Lumino.
Most of the existing efficient zero-knowledge proof algorithms need to create system parameters in a centralized way, so the third party who creates the parameters may forge proofs to destroy the underlying security of the main network. Lumino aims to generate the system parameters of the zero-knowledge proof through secure multi-party computation. In this process, the parameters are generated by members altogether, so they will not be obtained or tampered by a single party. This also constitutes the cornerstone of the subsequent privacy protection application. Only when the activity held safely, the subsequent decentralized application will be more secure.
This ceremony is PlatON’s latest practice in the field of privacy protection, and Lumino’s goal is to link the world’s cryptographic geeks to build a global privacy computation infrastructure. In the future community-based and open-source blockchain ecosystem, every participant is an important node, and every participation will make the underlying network more secure. Therefore, this is not only an activity, but also a collective wisdom full of ritual sense. PlatON will also take this opportunity to realize the vision of building infrastructure in the digital era, and make every effort to be the best practitioner in the field of privacy security.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Digi Observer journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.