Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have emerged as one of the most revolutionary developments in recent years, with the potential to support the elimination of centralized intermediaries where needed and installing distributed trusted services. They facilitate trustworthy trades and exchanges over the Internet, power cryptocurrencies, ensure transparency for documents, and much more. This broad range of applications makes the market potential of DLTs substantial. While at the moment one of the most significant application of DLTs is in investment through cryptocurrencies and ICOs, other areas are expected to gain more importance in the future. Although based on cryptographic techniques at their core, the currently deployed DLTs do not address privacy.
Even the idea of a public ledger that stores a verifiable record of transactions at first appears inherently incompatible with the privacy requirements of many potential applications, which handle sensitive data such as trade secrets and personal information. PRIViLEDGE project targets developing new cryptographic techniques and protocols to protect the data, facilitate these applications and make DLTs deliver on currently unmet promises.
The work in PRIViLEDGE is structured around the following objectives:
1. To provide efficient privacy-enhancing cryptography (PEC) for enabling the execution of smart
contracts on blockchains such that the privacy of users and the privacy of data is respected.
2. To develop and demonstrate cryptographic tools that aim at anonymity, transparency, and security and
maintain a balance between these goals, for practical deployments of DLT and blockchains.
3. To construct efficient cryptographic blockchain consensus protocols that rely on advances in
cryptography and satisfy the contradicting demands of verifiability, transparency, and stake-based
governance.
4. To provide effective exploitation of the PRIViLEDGE cryptography in real operational environments,
for enabling privacy in distributed ledgers.
Results from PRIViLEDGE are demonstrated through four ledger-based solutions: verifiable online voting; contract validation and execution for health insurance; university diploma record ledger; update mechanism for stake-based ledgers. The selected use cases are diverse and represent the principal application domains of DLT. This ensures wide reach and impact of the techniques developed in PRIViLEDGE beyond the immediate scope of the project.
