Analysis and growth firm, Witness, has launched a verification protocol after it secured $3.5 million in a seed funding spherical led by Huan Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures and a handful of angel buyers.
The corporate is led by former Paradigm, Google and Fb engineer Sina Sabet and a former enterprise investor at Framework Ventures, Joe Name.
Witness protocol is designed to situation digital possession utilizing present blockchain expertise. In an interview with Blockworks, Name notes that Witness allows individuals to achieve proofs over their information which might signify issues like attestations signed by two completely different customers.
“That information will be consumed by any software as a result of they will confirm it even when the info isn’t totally posted on-chain,” Name mentioned.
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Transaction prices stay an enormous onboarding drawback for crypto merchandise as we speak, with many customers unwilling to leap by a number of hoops as a way to take a look at out a brand new product.
What many purposes have resorted to as a way to acquire extra consumer curiosity is deploying their very own blockchain options, with cheaper transaction prices. Nevertheless, Name mentioned that these options nonetheless don’t deal with the core situation of getting to pay a number of charges for every motion you make on the blockchain.
What the witness protocol is ready to obtain is to make these merchandise free to make use of, by extending possession and verification throughout present blockchain networks.
“The novelty right here is that purposes can permit customers to obtain this info, and different purposes can nonetheless belief it as a result of they know when it was issued,” Name mentioned. “That’s the coordination paradigm that we’re attempting to unlock at a large scale by extending this useful resource that blockhains present in a novel method.”
The way in which that the witness protocol is ready to obtain that is by receiving hashes from customers that signify their information. On the blockchain, hashes consult with a digital footprint that’s composed of letters and numbers which signify a doc or set of information.
“If I present you a proof that claims, this hash existed on this block, then you understand that the info that the hash represents needed to have additionally existed at that block,” Name mentioned. “What you’re left with is what we name witness information, which is the mix of the proof and the info that represents the hash that the proof represents.”
As soon as these proofs are obtained, Name explains that there will probably be no reliance on witness protocol as a centralized middleman, which implies that customers may have sovereignty over their information and the power for anybody to confirm that information.
Witness protocol will probably be utilizing this newest fundraise to proceed rising its engineering group, Name notes.
