On October 20th, Gartner released 9 important strategic technology trends that need to be dig deep in 2021. Among them, Privacy-Enhancing Computation is on the list, becoming a rookie in the annual important strategic technology trends.
Gartner believes that by 2025, half of large enterprises and organizations will use privacy-enhanced computing to process data in untrusted environments and multi-party data analysis use cases . Enterprises and organizations should start to identify candidates for privacy-enhanced computing and evaluate the requirements for personal data transfer. , Data monetization, fraud analysis and other data processing activities for highly sensitive data use cases.
As a strategic technology trend that is still relatively niche, in the current frontier development and exploration of the blockchain industry, the figure of "privacy computing" has begun to gradually appear, so what is "privacy computing"? What role can it play in the blockchain and the future digital economy?
01
"Privacy Computing"
empowers everyone with data rights
According to the definition of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, privacy computing refers to the information technology that analyzes and calculates data and can verify the results of the calculation under the premise of ensuring that the data provider does not disclose sensitive data . It is mainly divided into cryptography and trusted hardware. Big field.
Generally speaking, privacy computing is a technology that protects private information without affecting the use of data . In the process of achieving "balancing the contradiction between data security and data value realization", cryptographic technologies such as secure multi-party computing, homomorphic encryption, and zero-knowledge proof have played a key role. The core idea is to design special encryption algorithms and Protocol, which supports direct calculation on encrypted data (that is, without touching the plaintext content of the data) to obtain the required calculation results.
Privacy computing and Bitcoin are quite similar to a certain extent, both "standing on the shoulders of giants"-although the birth and development of the time is not long, but the key technology components, such as security Cryptography technologies such as computing, homomorphic encryption, and zero-knowledge proof have been proposed as early as the 1980s and 1990s. Therefore, the technical foundation has been relatively mature, and it has entered the stage of practical application in various fields.
Gartner specifically emphasized that with the maturity of global data protection regulations, the privacy and violation risks faced by regional chief information officers are greater than ever before. Under this trend, unlike common static data security controls, "privacy computing" can protect the data being used while ensuring confidentiality or privacy, so the prospects are broad:
With the help of "privacy computing" technology, data can be "available but not visible". The data owner can safely open the data to the outside world, let the "frozen" data become the "fluid" data "oil", and release the value of the data.
" Bitcoin has truly realized the sacred and inviolable personal property from a technical point of view for the first time. " This is also the key to the birth of the digital currency revolution represented by Bitcoin-giving everyone a true possession of their own. The possibility of financial rights.
Similarly, with the development of the Internet, especially the advent of the WEB 3.0 era, the urgency of the issue of personal data rights has gradually emerged. With massive amounts of data and corresponding protection requirements, "privacy computing" with safe and reliable information protection has undoubtedly become a key part of the digital "new infrastructure" solution-as a solution to the problem of trusted computing in the case of opaque data "Privacy Computing" has played an indispensable role in helping the data privatization movement.
However, privacy computing is actually limited in terms of confirming data ownership and activating data sharing and flow, and new tools need to be introduced to further develop its functions. At the same time, the distributed nature of the blockchain and the Token mechanism built on it can just make up for the limitations of "privacy computing", and the two are almost naturally a perfect match.
At present, some star blockchain projects focus on mining in this area, such as the well-known domestic privacy computing protocol Phala Network based on blockchain and TEE technology, which applies privacy computing to the blockchain, which has increased to a certain extent. It has improved the immutability and verifiability of privacy calculation results, and has also increased the confidentiality of data on the blockchain. It has become one of the mainstream technology integration directions.
02Privacy
computing, "new infrastructure" just needs?
Sun Lilin, the founder and CEO of Matrix Yuan, once defined the nature of privacy computing: like blockchain, privacy computing is not a single technology, so if blockchain and privacy computing are used as technologies, it may be difficult to go down. Privacy computing should be an important part of the infrastructure, or it is the carrier of the infrastructure itself, and it is inherently an operation-oriented business and business, rather than a separate "technology".
At present, many data sharing solutions combining "privacy computing" technology have been born in various industries, and they have been applied in the fields of financial risk control, precision marketing, smart medical care, and insurance claims.
At the same time, represented by DeFi, the blockchain is currently in the process of gradual integration and development in finance and other industries, and the protection of privacy under massive assets has naturally become a rigid need- combining the functions of the blockchain with secure privacy calculations. In combination, we can build a better scalable and privacy-protected DeFi, while at the same time we can build up new data assets, realize safe and convenient data sharing and interaction, and create a reliable and responsible data economy.
There are also some star blockchain projects focusing on the mining of privacy computing, such as the well-known domestic privacy computing public chain PlatON, the privacy computing protocol Phala Network based on blockchain and TEE technology, and the recently launched Oasis on the mainnet.
Take the Phala Network as an example. It first forces users to have 100% ownership of personal data from the protocol layer, and uses the distributed nature of the blockchain to allow all individuals or organizations to freely access the Phala Network and activate it by introducing the Token medium. The entire network makes it a free market with tradable flows.
And the entire Phala network is a permissionless privacy computing service . On the one hand, it avoids the unavailability of TEE computing solutions. On the other hand, it also avoids that when hardware giants such as Intel commit malicious acts, the network remains secure because the nodes that make up the entire Phala network are scattered around the world and can Free entry and exit.
At the same time, Phala is a decentralized network, and its running programs are guaranteed to be trusted by smart contracts. This also means that no centralized institution or organization can master user data. In addition, it also solves the problem of matching the scale of data with trusted computing requirements: that is, how large-scale data is generated, and how much demand is needed for calculation.
That is to say, the Phala protocol, which adopts the blockchain + privacy computing solution, is trying to some extent to allow ordinary users to truly have their own "personal data rights" -to regain control from the monopoly giant and return the ownership to Data owner.
From this perspective, it is necessary for us to re-examine the possible uses of blockchain and blockchain to superimpose the foundation of privacy computing technology-the combination of privacy computing and blockchain meets more complex and changeable business needs. Especially for various scenarios of data storage/confirmation/sharing/transaction, the transformation from the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value is realized.
03Privacy
computing is in the ascendant
Since the beginning of this year, whether it is Grayscale's continued large-scale "tun currency" or Square and PayPal's emerging support for digital currency payments, the "high-profile" layout or entry of these foreign institutions has made Bitcoin and the blockchain industry welcome Here comes an unprecedented highlight moment.
In fact, in recent years, foreign technology giants have been deploying the privacy computing industry. Two new patent applications issued by Microsoft in April 2019 indicate that it is using Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) in its blockchain products. In August, Google also announced the launch of a new multi-party secure computing (MPC) open source library. Data collaboration in a private and safe way.
On the other hand, in China, financial institutions and technology giants are relatively "low-key" at the "coin" level. The few information disclosures are mostly concentrated on technology research and development, especially the application level, and are committed to breaking through the bottleneck of large-scale reliable applications, including privacy computing. Technology is also one of the main directions in the country.
Ant Financial, Tencent Cloud, and Baidu have launched their own multi-party secure computing (MPC) products in 2019. Alibaba, WeBank, JD and other companies have also formed certain advantages in their respective technical fields.
The test network (codename: Vendetta) of Phala Phase III (POC-3) was also officially launched on November 15, officially allowing private computing nodes to register freely, and any device that integrates SGX functions can run POC-3 customers Join the Phala network, which is the backbone of the domestic exploration in this "privacy computing" direction.
At the same time, my country has always attached great importance to data privacy at the legal level. As early as November 2016, the "Network Security Law of the People's Republic of China" emphasized the importance of data privacy. In 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the "Data Security Management Measures (Draft for Comment)." In July this year, the 20th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress announced the "Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft)", which further improved my country's legal provisions on data privacy.
People are always used to overestimating the development of a technology within two years, but underestimating the revolutionary impact it may bring in the next ten years . When the tide of the future data era is surging, how to make huge data elements become controllable assets may be the direction of the explosion of privacy computing technology that can best play, let us wait and see.
Do you pay attention to information related to Web3.0 and privacy computing, and how do you see its future development? Welcome to write down your opinion in the message area.
Previous post: The battle for the entrance of the encrypted world has started, and there may be no more wallets and trading platforms in the absolute sense in the future
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"Disclaimer: This article is the author's independent point of view, and does not represent the vernacular blockchain position. This content is only for the popular science learning and exchanges of encryption enthusiasts, and does not constitute investment opinions or suggestions. Please treat it rationally, establish a correct concept, and increase risk awareness. The copyright of the article and the final interpretation right belong to the vernacular blockchain. 』
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