Sepior Key Management Secures Instars.com Social Media Platform — Sepior
By: Frank Wiener
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Social Media, Cryptography, Privacy, Blockchain

Instars, the pioneering decentralized and privacy-focused social networking platform, has integrated Sepior’s multiparty computation (MPC) key management to secure digital assets for the Instar Blockchain. Instars.com is the first social networking platform to use a combination of blockchain technology and secure MPC to provide innovative new social networking and personal data exchange services.

Instars was launched through a partnership and multi-year collaboration between Partisia Blockchain, a Web 3.0 platform, and Insights Network, a market research firm. The goal was to create a social networking platform that fundamentally changed the model for exchanging personal data between Requestors (parties requesting personal information) and Providers (parties providing personal information).

The traditional model for this exchange of data is through a third-party Provider that collects data from various platform and service Users, and then sells that data to information Requestors. In this model, the Provider gets paid handsomely and the Users, which are the source of the data, are paid nothing. Instars changes that model to allow the Users of the Instars social networking platform to be the Provider of their own personal data and to receive payment directly from Requestors.

In addition to connecting Requestors and Providers, the Instars platform provides a privacy preserving framework, which allows for varying levels of information exchange. One level of information exchange is to allow data analysis and insights to be derived from a Provider’s personal data, without actually disclosing their personal data. This insight is achieved using secure MPC, which provides the ability for multiple parties to compute across data held by different parties without requiring their data to be exchanged or disclosed to each other or any third parties.

Another level of information exchange is to sell a copy of the Provider’s personal data to the Requestor. In this example, the Requestor gains direct access to all of the data provided. The compensation for different levels of data exchange may vary accordingly. The important points are that the Provider is in control of who has access to what level information, and they are directly compensated accordingly.

Instars represents a technology innovation as well as a service innovation. The combination of blockchain technology and secure MPC technology in this manner represents an industry first.

Blockchain Provides Distributed Ledger and Smart Contract Functions

Blockchains provide a distributed ledger function for high integrity storage of information, and efficient smart contract automation. This distributed ledger function is essential for securely storing exchanged data and providing access to this data only when the terms of the smart contract have been satisfied. In the case of Instars, a smart contract might be an agreement between a Requestor and a Provider, which defines the terms for a requested data exchange and the payment. The terms would typically specify what type of data is requested and the amount to be paid. The smart contract would automatically verify that the data uploaded from the service satisfies the criteria and then initiates payment.

Application Optimized Forms of Secure MPC

Secure MPC can be used for multiple diverse functions such as privacy preserving computations, and for protecting secrets such as cryptographic keys that are used to encrypt data stored on the blockchain and to digitally sign and approve the transfer of digital assets. Partisia is a world-renowned expert in the application of secure MPC for the purpose of privacy preserving computations, and Sepior is similarly expert in the application of secure MPC for cryptographic key operations and protection. Together, these application-optimized implementations of secure MPC provide industry leading privacy and security.

Partisia MPC Enables Privacy Preserving Analytics

Secure MPC allows for the computation of data held by multiple Providers, without requiring the Providers to share their private data with each other or any other third party. For example, an Instar Requestor might want to know the average salary for all female participants between the ages of 24 and 32 and who answered affirmatively to a particular survey question. Instars’ use of secure MPC matches those participants and calculates their average salary, without requiring the participants to disclose their birth date, salary, or their personal answer to the particular question. The Provider’s personal data never leaves their personal devices.

As we might imagine, providing such levels of data privacy with secure MPC should increase the comprehensiveness of information that participants are willing to provide, and produce materially more accurate data insights than information shared with other, less trusted, platforms.

Sepior MPC Protects the Confidentiality of Exchanged Data

Continuing with the above example, the average salary insights need to be shared with the Requestor. The calculated data may be uploaded to the Instars blockchain, to allow for smart contract validation that the information has been provided, and to provide validation that access to the data was granted to the Requestor. Since data stored on a blockchain is generally accessible to other parties with access to the same blockchain any sensitive data must be encrypted. As part of the contract fulfillment, the Instars service provides the Requestor with a key to decrypt and access the exchanged data. These keys are generated and protected using Sepior’s secure MPC for Threshold Key Management.

Sepior MPC Secures Tokens Held in Escrow

The Instars social network allows for Requestors to pay Providers in the form of INSTAR, DAI, EOS, or USDC tokens. To facilitate these different forms of payment, tokens from one network must be exchanged for tokens from another network. Instars provides a token bridge to facilitate these DeFi services. In this process, the exchanged tokens are locked in smart contracts to ensure they cannot be double spent. Sepior’s key management technology facilitates the locking and releasing of these assets under custody based on multiparty approvals which include the participation of smart contracts.

The fundamental paradigm shift of regulators and individuals to require greater privacy and end-user control over their personal data will only increase with time. Instars represents the first of what we anticipate to be a stream of new services that leverage the combination of blockchain and secure MPC to provide innovative new services, with new business models.

Sepior has been optimizing the use of secure multiparty computation to provide key management and protection since 2014. We’ve been optimizing our technology to work in combination with blockchain since our joint collaboration with SBI Holdings to develop digital asset custody solutions in 2018. We invite you to contact to explore how we can help unleash innovation by pushing new service and technology frontiers with our proven MPC technology.