Partisia Blockchain Foundation brings multi-party, zero-knowledge computation to Polygon via its unified smart contract-technology, enabling developers to build new blockchain-based use cases. This comes on the heels of its appointment of former Cardano Foundation executive, Hinrich Pfeifer, as COO.
Partisia Blockchain Foundation, an independent non-profit supporting the development of the world’s ultimate zero-knowledge blockchain, announced the completion of its Mainnet v3.0 integration into Polygon, an Ethereum scaling protocol onboarding millions to web3. The completion came just days after it announced its appointment of Hinrich Pfeifer to the position of Chief Operations Officer.
Existing smart contracts, starting from the very first smart contract in 2009 with the launch of Bitcoin, have been isolated into two separate and vastly different types —public and private— limiting the expansion of blockchain applications. The more common type, Public, or visible, smart contracts provide weaker privacy posing a problem for use cases that require maintaining discreet health or financial records. Whilst, private smart contracts protect against outside interference or malicious activity, but they cannot be easily audited or verified by third parties.
The Foundation’s mainnet v3.0 integration unlocks Partisia’s privacy-preserving computation infrastructure and a new type of smart contract — allowing Polygon developers to build use cases that require data confidentiality and privacy while using a public blockchain.
“This technology will drastically transform the way businesses and individuals interact with each other,” said Brian Gallagher, Co-Founder of Partisia Blockchain.
This technology, leveraging Partisia Blockchain’s unified private and public smart contracts and zero-knowledge multi-party computation, is certain to play a role in the industry’s future as developers gain the potential to build hundreds of Polygon-powered use-cases. This opens the door to numerous opportunities, including:
- Management of private documents and contents – The ability to keep aspects of the contract private while still allowing for public verification is crucial in cases such as medical and health data, financial identity or credit scores etc.
- Decentralized search engines – Today, advertising-based search engine models expose users to a bad experience, and to the risk of falling victims to click-bait, fake news, scams, and other malware. As an alternative, the “Better Internet Search” initiative has integrated Partisia Blockchain’s unified smart contract to serve a new, ads-free experience, and produce search results without collecting users’ private data. Encrypted data never gets decrypted, and any product information provided has been computed with MPC to be as relevant to the user’s experience without personal data ever being decrypted – this is the power of zk computation.
- Monetizable data on decentralized social networks – In the short run, the better data protection of zero-knowledge MPC makes use of users’ most valuable but sensitive data in a sound and regulatory-compliant way. In the long run, this has the potential to change the power structures operating in the internet economy of today and allow for more competition on the application and service levels. A good example is the “Data for Good” platform designed to allow anyone to donate data without disclosing personal information, using MPC and blockchain to strike the right balance between confidentiality and transparency.
- Trade Finance industry and decentralized exchanges – The first large-scale and commercial use of MPC was a decentralized exchange conducted in 2008 by the team behind Partisia Blockchain followed by a number of MPC based auctions within energy, finance and telecoms. Partisia’s initial focus is on bridging different blockchains and allowing users to seamlessly move data and tokens from one blockchain and security paradigm to another. The aim is to increase participation in existing DeFi solutions and to lower the barrier to bringing DeFi to traditional markets.
- Private Auctions – With increasingly complicated supply chains and niche products, price setting and auctions are becoming an integrated part of many markets. In a unified smart contract, it is possible to keep track of buyers and sellers and the resulting trades while the bids remain confidential. Furthermore, the privacy aspect zero-knowledge MPC brings can also assist in eliminating the possibility of shill bidding, the practice of artificially boosting the price of an item through dishonest bids.
“The integration of Partisia Blockchain’s unified smart contracts based on zero-knowledge, multi-party computation opens up countless new and exciting possibilities for all Polygon developers,” says Antoni Martin, Polygon Enterprise Lead.
This integration and recent COO appointment join Partisia Blockchain Foundation’s momentum, as the Foundation doubled its headcount over the past year, with senior hires like Iulia Mihailescu (CMO), and Jennifer de Broglie (Director of Thought Leadership).
Hinrich brings with him his vast expertise as the Cardano Foundation’ General Secretary, and in the development of both the Cardano Foundation’s global team and its protocol and blockchain adoption. Alongside its co-founders, Hinrich will oversee the Partisia Blockchain Foundations operations, strategy and vision, as the Foundation scales blockchain expansion and its on-chain solutions to issues of counterfeiting, digital identity and trade finance gaps.
Hinrich’s appointment compliments the Foundation’s progress as he spearheads the Foundation’s rapid expansion to “deliver the promises that multi-party computation offers to different industries.”
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