Blockchain Leader nChain Says Its Technology Could Play a Big Role in Ensuring AI Models Are Secure and Trustworthy

In September, the firm successfully demonstrated a way to cryptographically prove that an AI model is trained on a certain dataset and that nothing has been tampered with.

Blockchain technology company nChain has highlighted the potential role its technology could play in ensuring the security and trustworthiness of artificial intelligence (AI) models. In September, nChain demonstrated a method to cryptographically prove an AI model's training on a specific dataset without any tampering. This was achieved through on-chain transactions on the BSV mainnet, utilizing Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) techniques to verify the existence of information without revealing it publicly.

The ability to record and verify proprietary information is crucial for AI developers, who must maintain confidentiality for competitive purposes while also assuring regulators and the public that their systems are developed responsibly. nChain has recorded the relevant transaction and made the tools used available on its GitHub page.

This serves as another example of BSV's capability to enter new industry segments and even create entirely new industries by leveraging its key features of speed, unbounded scalability, and affordability. Data is secured by the proven proof-of-work (PoW) transaction verification algorithm rather than the less secure proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm. The BSV network can perform tasks that other UTXO-based PoW blockchain networks simply cannot handle.

Verifiable AI is a relatively new industry sector with promising potential. At present, the field is primarily the domain of academics and researchers, with little in the way of commercial activity. When it comes to training data, weights and algorithms, the well-known AI firms are jealously guarding their secrets, presenting only a “black box” as the final product they expect end users to trust, as long as it works.

So a problem arises that could impact the industry in several ways: companies are in a fiercely contested race to build the most advanced AI, and the prize for winning that contest (or even stages of it) could bring them immense wealth and power. At the same ime, governments and the public are wary of the secretive way AI is being developed, which builds mistrust in AI technology overall. Developers need to balance these two driving forces to achieve their goals (and possibly avoid the imposition of crippling regulations).

According to nChain Research Director Dr. Wei Zhang, this is where blockchain and ZKPs could provide the perfect solution. He wrote in a blog post that major AI players must “demonstrate that an AI system operates according to its specifications, free of critical bugs and adheres to ethical standards such as fairness, transparency and safety, ideally without revealing proprietary information of the system.”

ZKPs are a way of proving that information exists and that you possess it without revealing its contents. Hypothetical but simpler blockchain applications of ZKPs include an identity document that could prove you're a certain age or reside in a certain place without needing to show those precise details to anybody. Another could prove you have adequate net worth to invest in a project without explicitly stating how much money you have.

Similarly, companies involved in AI development could use blockchain records to verify their machine learning weights and models, that training data and safety standards are sound, and that their AI model is following the guidelines they claim it to be without the risk of that information leaking to competitors.

While the ZKP concept has been around since the 1980s, the computation required to process the necessary cryptographic methods known as zk-SNARKS (that's Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) or STARKS (Scalable Transparent Arguments of Knowledge) makes it a difficult task for most blockchain networks.

“When you think of ZKPs, there are two parts: proof generation, and proof verification,” Zhang told CoinGeek. “For SNARKS, in this particular context, the schemes we're using are always trying to achieve efficient verification.”

“Blockchain is very expensive for on-chain computation. If on-chain computation is only restricted to verification, then it works because the heavy duty is on the proof generation side, and that is off-chain.”

Several teams are working on ways to do this besides nChain, on other blockchain networks including Ethereum and BTC. ZKPs are computationally intensive to perform. There are two parts to it: generating the proof; and verifying it. Both ETH and BTC run up against the same scaling limitations that have plagued their networks for years with other applications.

“They made verification feasible on-chain, great. And everyone is in a race trying to make the proof generation less of a burden. At the moment, you can do that for specific computation, or set of computations, but it's very difficult to have a universal approach such that the proof generation is feasible for any computation.”

BTC as it exists today is way too limited in data capacity to perform the task, but there have been moderately successful attempts by BitVM and StarkWare at verifying STARK proofs, using the BTC testnet “Signet” (where OP_CAT has been enabled), and the recently touted “Fractal Bitcoin” (which could be described as a copy of Signet with an exotic mining mechanism). Fractal Bitcoin's feasibility