What Is Multi-Party Computation as-a-Service?
By design, blockchain ensures transparency and decentralization. As such, all of the transactions are recorded in distributed ledgers that are available publicly. While transparency is the core feature of blockchain networks, it also leads to the problem of data privacy. Since transactional data is available in the public domain, malicious elements can readily identify similar patterns between transactions to identify and track individuals.
Add to this the explosive growth of DeFi. In the last couple of years, the DeFi ecosystem has flourished as hundreds of dApps and DeFi protocols emerged across several individual blockchain networks. While layer-2 solutions are aimed at solving the problems of interoperability and scalability, blockchain’s privacy-related concerns remained unaddressed.
To overcome this problem while ensuring that the core fundamentals of blockchain technology remain intact, next-generation projects started exploring the concept of multi-party computation to add more layers of privacy to the data that is being used in services on blockchain networks. Since multi-party computation (MPC) distributes computation operations across several parties where no singular entity can see the other parties’ data, it ensures end-to-end data privacy.
However, MPC is only one part of the puzzle. As a standalone solution, multi-party computation (MPC) can offer unmatched levels of privacy. But to make it worthwhile for the blockchain ecosystem, one needs to merge MPC with blockchain technology’s inherent features. The only way to ensure privacy while also facilitating dApps and DeFi protocols is to ensure that the transparency, consensus, and integrity provided by blockchain technologies are properly used to orchestrate MPC without compromising privacy. Currently, a handful of companies have been able to successfully merge MPC with blockchain technology, thus delivering the preferred attributes of both ecosystems to consumers and service providers alike.
That said, building an MPC solution from the ground-up needs time, effort, and resources. Accordingly, MPC-as-a-service has emerged as an innovative solution for enterprises (and individuals) who want end-to-end privacy for their blockchain services. Think of it as your traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) model where anyone can rent the services by paying a specific fee to the service provider. The MPC-as-a-Service model offers businesses and individuals to scale their operations as and when needed by giving them to choose from several pay-as-you-use models.
Author Bio
Kurt Nielsen, the Co-Founder & President of Partisia Blockchain, is one of the leading industry professionals in the fields of advanced distributed cryptography and decentralized infrastructure. He has extensive experience in strategic decision-making, applied information economics, data science, and mechanism design spanning several industries. With a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Copenhagen, Kurt has donned several career hats before founding Partisia. He has previously worked as a professor at the University of Copenhagen and co-founded several companies like Partisia, Sepior, Energiauktion.dk, Secata, and Partisia Blockchain.
