2019-12-12 Meeting notes

Date

About

Today's presentation was by Rebecca Aspler from Unbound Tech, a Multi-Party Computation (MPC) security company. Rebecca highlighted Unbound Tech’s unique wallet type that Hyperledger Fabric users can implement. Today, Hyperledger Fabric documentation describes four different types of wallets according to where they store their identities: File system, In-memory, Hardware Security Module (HSM) and CouchDB. However, a fifth type, Multi-Party Computation (MPC) based type of wallet exists, is SW only based and is FIPS 140 L2 certified; so regulated organizations can use it as well. 

Multi-party computation (MPC) is an advanced form of cryptography which enables a distributed model of trust based on splitting secrets into multiple shares distributed across multiple entities. In the case of blockchain transactions, MPC is used for securing the blockchain private keys and executing the sign operation using key shares held by multiple signers. Because keys always remain split into multiple shares throughout their lifetime – starting from key generation and even while in use – it is possible to protect the keys without requiring dedicated hardware or the high cost of development.

Rebecca leads the Blockchain product line at Unbound Tech. Prior to that role and specializing in product management for large scale cloud based (SaaS) enterprise software applications Rebecca has led product management groups and operations at companies such as SAP, working with various Fortune 1,000 companies.

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