# Partisia Blockchain

**Published by:** [L U C I D](https://paragraph.com/@smpc/)
**Published on:** 2022-11-02
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@smpc/partisia-blockchain

## Content

Partisia BlockchainZero-Knowledge Computation as a service. Partisia endeavours to provide a Blockchain agnostic, privacy oriented platform for the provision of ZK computation on-chain, off-chain and cross-chain. It accomplishes this through a two-sided approach: the first approach orchestrates ZK nodes on the Partisia Blockchain to perform Zero-Knowledge computation, the second approach involves providing ZK computation modules across independent blockchains. Partisia strikes the perfect balance between transparency, accountability, privacy, decentralisation and confidentiality with full regulatory compliance. The team behind Partisia Blockchain represents world-leading cryptographers and pioneers within the commercial use of ZK computations. Interoperability and privacy are at the forefront of Partisia’s primary value proposition; providing a basic blockchain with consensus and governance as well as second layer applications, with interoperable ZK and Oracle services delivered as-a-service across blockchains and other non-blockchain platforms. Blockchains provide a secure infrastructure, however, traditional blockchains lack confidentiality which is a critical trade-off that may hamper adoption and the disruption of centralised legacy solutions by a lack of compliance, reduced uptake and real transfer of power and control of data.Key FeaturesA state of the art high performance public blockchain with sharding, eager block production and pure finalityInfrastructure for privacy preserving orchestration and auditing.ZK computation protocols tailored to different use casesA framework for efficient and robust communication and processing of ZK computationsA framework for tailored secure preprocessing material as fuel for efficient ZK computationsBYOC: a feature allowing users to pay for fees with crypto assets external to Partisia, theoretically reducing $MPC sell pressure.Zero Knowledge ComputationZK Computation has seen use in Blockchain, but is generally limited to the use of ZK proofs (one subset of ZK computation) which are limited to proving data integrity. Cryptographic algorithms such as MPC (another subset of ZK computation) can be used to entirely obfuscate computation such that no party jointly computing the set of inputs provided can reveal anything about the general computation itself or the inputs comprising it. In Blockchain, ZK proofs are utilised in Zcash and Monero for private value transfers, as well as in scaling solutions where large batches of transactions must have their computational integrity verified. The application of ZK Computation in the privacy preservation of global computation is much less explored; Partisia will be the proof of concept for the success of this paradigm.Multiparty Computation - a Subset of Zero Knowledge ComputationMPC was pioneered by Ivan Damgård, the co-founder of Partisia. Due to the aforementioned fact, it is clear that Partisia has the upper hand with respect to private computation, with research dating back almost 40 years (back to Damgårds seminal paper of 1987). Partisia has been developing custom ZK computation systems since 2008. In the years prior; the prospect of implementing Multi-party computation in a practical setting for any meaningful computation was considered not possible due to a lack of decentralised consensus that enforce the correct incentives for an honest majority (a requirement for Multi-Party Computation).A Compelling Use CaseFor major corporations involved in trade finance; privacy is extremely important. Supply chain vendors will not use public blockchains for the coordination of their business due to issues with regulatory compliance. This is because someone can reverse engineer business activity. If the company in question is a publicly traded company people would be privy to how many sales and logistical shipments were made before a quarterly announcement to shareholders, which market participants may be able to front-run. Future of enterprise adoption with respect to decentralised computation requires this type of privacy. Trade finance is a solid use case for Partisia. Consider a manufacturer in China who wanted to sell products to a buyer in Ethiopia; It would be difficult to have a banking partner finance that transaction given the risk associated. Financing a trade deal involving an American Company shipping to the UK carries much less risk because the bank in question can coordinate between these two vendors and perform due diligence much more effectively. Inside of this trade finance economy; 2 trillion dollars per year ends up going unpaid which is known as the trade finance gap. Partisia can facilitate trade finance via private smart contract logic, creating an entirely new type of DeFi economy. As of this moment, when the average user thinks of DeFi they think of swapping tokens on Uniswap, or taking out collateralized loans on Aave. Consider the prior example; Imagine the shipment from Ethiopia to China was put up for the ability to receive the financing and loans from DeFi traders who can purchase a productised financial instrument that gets created from that shipment. It goes on chain and has ratings which reflect the solvency status of the vendor and as such; be able to determine the level of risk with a market for pricing interest rates. The productised financial instrument can trade on-chain like a token. This type of Trade Finance economy creates attractive high yield opportunities which tend to appeal to the DeFi community. As the shipment from Ethiopia becomes less risky (as it leaves the vendor’s port and gets closer to the end user), whoever made the initial loan for a certain percentage may now want to put up the loan for sale at a lower rate now that the prospect of risk is much lower. Partisia can fully facilitate this type of use case in a regulatory compliant manner. This sort of use case can create billions and billions of turnover if implemented correctly. World trade is consolidating among major corporations who facilitate these trades. The right corporate partner would allow shipments to get created that would get pushed through their ports and trade finance can occur on the blockchain. Partisia are pursuing partners like this.The State of PartisiaPartisia exists to serve censorship resistant private ZK computation on a transparent, high-throughput public blockchain which enables regulatory compliance through unified smart contracts. Privacy as a service, which is essentially; A Zero-Knowledge computation market; will be native to the Partisia Blockchain as well as extended to other Layer 1 Blockchains and Execution Environments. As well as extending these services to other Blockchains, Partisia endeavours to become the most secure superhighway bridge in the marketplace, as a collaborative layer connecting not only Partisia to other Blockchains, but other Blockchains to other Blockchains via Partisia. The moat to this sort of adoption is the inability to use external assets. Partisia addresses this with BYOC (Bring Your Own Coin), allowing users to pay for fees with external crypto assets. Partisia’s Oracle service ensures that assets external to the chain (in the case of BYOC) retain the correct status with respect to balance and location.The benefits of unified smart contractsEconomics, Security & $MPCThe Security model of the Partisia Blockchain is based on a semi-permissioned proof-of-stake consensus operated and governed by Baker nodes, ZK nodes and Oracle nodes. For new nodes to become whitelisted the existing nodes on the network must allow admittance. A semi-permissioned structure where existing nodes decide whether new nodes qualify ensures the utmost security of the network. Baker nodes take care of operating the core blockchain functions with consensus and governance. ZK nodes take care of running ZK computations (the Flagship Partisia Application), and Oracle nodes exist for the purpose of facilitating Oracle services, such as ensuring the correctness of states with respect to token balances on corresponding chains. Node operators are incentivised with fees paid in BYOC as well as $MPC yield from staking. Operators will have their stake slashed if attempting to cheat; which provides sufficient disincentive for nefarious activity on-chain (such as double voting). Game theory dictates that it does not make sense to attempt to cheat a proof of stake consensus mechanism that is not based on the naive ‘nothing at stake’ implementation. Staked MPC tokens enable a node operator to receive fees in external coins while the staked MPC token enhances the security of the network. In economic terms the node operators are the residual claimants of fees and the MPC tokens are the entry barrier. Also, for services where staking provides additional guarantees, MPC tokens function as a dynamic entry barrier where more staking generates more fees. MPC currently has 3 primary functions: Delegated community staking, the creation of mini nodes tailored to various custom smaller tasks as well as staking smart contracts, requiring staked MPC to keep them on-chain. It is mentioned that the decoupled token economy of MPC and BYOC will align incentives, and reduce sell pressure of the native asset, MPC. This is certainly true if there are greater incentives to being a node operator within Partisia. Given the nature of the services offered and the use-cases that this novel tech can facilitate, it is estimated that the fees paid for these services will continue to grow, and as such; demand for $MPC to become a node operator in order to be the beneficiary of rising fees.ConsiderationsThe management team is headed by Kurt Nielsen (CEO) and Peter Frands Frandsen (CTO). Kurt is the co-founder of Partisia and Sepior. Both companies are pioneers within the use of ZK computations, while Partisia was behind the first large scale commercial use of ZK computation in 2008, which probably makes it the most experienced team of ZK computation developers in the world. As part of a global initiative, Partisia and Sepior are co-founders of the MPC Alliance. The goal is to unite developers and practitioners of Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC) to accelerate industry awareness and adoption of MPC. The MPC Alliance consists of industry leaders and pioneers within the development and commercial adoption of MPC, of which Meta (formerly Facebook) has recently become a member. The demand for decentralised protocols which preserve confidentiality and facilitate private computation is increasing, evidence of this is Coinbase’s recent acquisition of unbound security, a company specialising in secure multiparty computation. As well as Fireblocks’ Series E private raise, reportedly at an $8 billion valuation. Few are positioned as well as Partisia with respect to the paradigm of decentralised private computation as a service across Blockchains. Compelling, novel use cases which before, were not addressable with the constraints of the technology of yesterday’s Blockchain space, can now be explored.

## Publication Information

- [L U C I D](https://paragraph.com/@smpc/): Publication homepage
- [All Posts](https://paragraph.com/@smpc/): More posts from this publication
- [RSS Feed](https://api.paragraph.com/blogs/rss/@smpc): Subscribe to updates
- [Twitter](https://twitter.com/lucidity0x): Follow on Twitter