BLADE Research
Abstract view of BLADE
The BLADE expedition proposal aims to eliminate the exploitation, misuse, and fraud of personal data online. Currently, internet users have zero control over their digital identity, they don’t have the ability to choose who has access to their data or for what purposes.
Through the use of blockchain supported secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC), this expedition hopes to solve some of these key issues contributing to the exploitation of personal data. This approach will allow for applications and computations to run directly on the network while guaranteeing the security and privacy of the end-users. Since the end user never loses control of their identity, companies can leverage data without the risk of fraudulent activity or personal exploitation.
Intellectual Merit for BLADE
The proposed BLADE initiative is working to create an ecosystem of researchers and academics, in which generates data from people, IoT devices, and sensor networks, that maintains the devices and users privacy while simultaneously making this data available for public use. BLADE will design, implement, and operate an experimental distributed ledger platform that maintains high-integrity and transparent processing within a decentralized system. The platform will support extensibility though smart contracts and will be agnostic as to the smart contract language, or identity infrastructure.
In order to stimulate this academic and industry development, this multi-institutional initiative brings together a diverse team of computer scientists, computer engineers, complex system specialists, as well as business and law professionals. This team will carry out a transformative expedition into blockchain technology, block-supported secure MPCs, and various applications which will serve as key enablers for the next phase towards a Web 3.0 and a new decentralized digital economy.
BLADE Project Goal
The goal of BLADE is to find solutions pertaining to the scalability, efficiency and data privacy of distributed applications. This goal is to be attained through the optimization of algorithms, a design of software, increased computation efficiency, storage capability, and network performance.
The project identifies five major intellectual thrusts: blockchain protocol innovation, MPC system level scalability and efficiency, attribute-based cryptography for data protection and privacy, business and legal implications of distributed applications, and a large-scale experimental testbed for validating results.
BLADE Broader Impact
The broader impact of the BLADE expedition comes from the increase in scalability and efficiency of Blockchain 2.0 and Web 3.0. This efficiency will spawn practical use of this technology long before the industry standard expectations.
In order to educate researchers, academics and the workforce on Blockchain 2.0 and Web 3.0 technology, BLADE will launch the Blockchain Innovation Society as an NFP 501 (c) (3). The Blockchain Innovation Society will be responsible for creating a blueprint of education for undergraduates, graduate students, post doctorates and, industry practitioners Through the use of workshops, research and educational material, BLADE hopes to accelerate the development of Web 3.0 applications and adoption.