Web2’s data model is fuel, and Web2 has shown to be terrible at protecting it. Over recent years, leaks and hacks on centralized servers have become almost an everyday occurrence – and it’s getting worse. The sudden shift from working at home to combat the epidemic created many new security vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity breaches rose by 10% in 2021 due to the increased pressure placed on hospitals and healthcare system.
Then there’s the challenge of data harvesting and surveillance – a shadow we’ve all had to live with since the Snowden revelations in 2014. While legislation such as the European General Data Protection Regulation is supposed to remedy this problem, in actuality it only leads to lengthy, tedious legal battles. The latest twist in a GDPR dispute between the EU and Meta Platforms is that the firm has threatened to pull Facebook and Instagram entirely – hardly a desirable outcome for millions of users.
Furthermore, there’s a severe lack of transparency with how data is used across the board. We don’t know how our data may be used by third parties once we give it over.
Blockchain is the answer?
Blockchain is purported to offer a solution to many of these problems, and it’s true that from the individual perspective, there’s plenty of promise. Blockchain could give us the ability to control how personal data are distributed and used.
But personal data is not the only part. Companies also hold a vast amount of data that doesn’t necessarily just relate to people, and that’s just as sensitive, if not more so, from the corporate perspective. Think about data like trade secrets and intellectual properties, payments to suppliers and financial information. Self-sovereign identities wouldn’t have protected Nvidia from its most recent hack, which resulted in the leak of proprietary information about the firm’s latest GPU driver.
Enterprises often have too many issues to make blockchain an attractive solution for protecting their data. Legacy platforms like Ethereum are the most secure thanks to being heavily decentralized, but they’re slow and expensive to run. What’s more, they’re also too transparent for most firms wanting to keep a degree of privacy over their enterprise data.
Then there’s the control element. Most firms are opposed to the concept of placing data on a network decentralized that everyone can access. Distributed ledgers that are private or with permission can act as a barrier to data access. Because private blockchains are centralized, it can compromise trust.
There’s also the inherent tension between blockchain records and the terms of the GDPR. The regulation stipulates a “right to be forgotten,” which allows any data owner to request the deletion of their data – a right that blockchain’s iron-clad transaction immutability cannot reconcile.
The Blockers
Blockchain innovators have worked over the years to resolve some of these tradeoffs. With the positive outcome that many firms now embrace blockchain for business-critical processes, some are even starting to adopt it. Chainalysis, a partner of BNY Mellon, has recently offered its suite of risk management services to help clients that want to transact crypto.
However, while challenges like scalability and fees are selling points for almost every non-Ethereum platform these days, only one project has managed to solve the GDPR conflict, and seemingly, only one has managed to create a permissioned or private instance of blockchain that doesn’t compromise on trust. ParallelChain has the solution in both instances.
ParallelChain introduces a unique feature called “proof of immutability”, which stores blockchain metadata. It allows participants in a blockchain network to verify the trustworthiness of each others’ data by proving its immutability.
Why would you need proof of immutability, though, if it’s a feature inherent to blockchain transactions? ParallelChain understands that there is a risk of manipulation in smaller blockchain networks. Due to the vulnerability of small chains such as Ethereum Classic to attacks of 51%, entities might want to increase their verification layer to verify that they have accurate data.
ParallelChain has also found a solution to the “right to be forgotten” clause of the GDPR, having established a proprietary solution that would ensure compliance. A patent application has been filed for this method.
Reclaiming Control Over Our Data
These solutions allow a company to run ParallelPrivate instances with the assurance of compliance data integrity. ParallelPrivate can also handle 120,000 transactions per minute with a 0.003 second average latency. It’s also compatible with Hyperledger-powered apps, allowing easy portability.
Web2’s Web2 model leaves data control out of reach. We can only hope that individuals and enterprises will find more innovative Web3 and blockchain solutions to address these challenges and achieve a better balance between privacy and integrity.