How often do you shop, play games, subscribe to services, or trade stocks online? Well, here’s the bad news: current blockchains aren’t really suited for that.

The problem lies in data leakage: every transaction, every message, and every action you take on the blockchain is visible to everyone. While transparency is great for verification, it also creates a massive vulnerability. For example, someone could frontrun your transaction before it’s completed, gaining an advantage in trading or gaming.

Without encryption, blockchains are an open book — not just for honest participants, but for malicious actors as well.

At first glance, transparency in blockchains seems like a good thing: everything is verifiable, everything is open. But in today’s digital world, we’ve grown accustomed to privacy and confidentiality. In games, your actions are hidden until you execute them. In messaging apps, only your recipient can see your messages. And, of course, you don’t want anyone tracking your shopping habits.

If blockchains can’t guarantee the privacy of users’ actions, we won’t see even the simplest internet applications moving onchain, let alone complex financial services.

One of the key points I want to emphasize is that encryption shouldn’t be isolated to a single ecosystem or blockchain. Instead, it should be available across all platforms where developers and users operate. This is the only way blockchains can overcome their limitations and reach new heights.

Fairblock offers an innovative solution: encryption modules that integrate seamlessly into existing blockchain networks. This means developers can choose which elements to encrypt, while users gain confidence that their data remains private.

One problem with existing blockchain encryption solutions is that they tend to be rigid, focusing on a single form of cryptography. But no single solution is perfect. In practice, a combination of different cryptographic methods works best, with each covering the vulnerabilities of the other.

For example, Zero Knowledge (ZK) proofs make data private to everyone except the prover. Meanwhile, Multi-Party Computation (MPC) can be used to split decryption keys, reducing centralization risks. However, no method is flawless on its own, and only a combination of these techniques can offer maximum security.

One of Fairblock’s most promising innovations is Threshold Identity-Based Encryption (tIBE). This approach offers fast encryption and decryption with minimal computational costs or bandwidth usage.

This opens the door to a wide range of applications, from protecting DeFi strategies to ensuring confidentiality in gaming. Imagine an NFT auction where all bids are encrypted until the auction closes. Or a game of blackjack where the dealer’s second card is revealed only after all players have finalized their moves.

Encryption isn’t just a necessity for secure blockchain operations. It’s the key to building more powerful, flexible, and secure applications. Current blockchain infrastructure is far from perfect, but solutions like Fairblock are paving the way for a new internet — decentralized, private, and secure.

If we want blockchains to become the foundation of next-gen applications, encryption needs to be woven into their very fabric. I believe that’s how we’ll make what’s possible online even better onchain.