MediBloc
Own your health data. It’s rightfully yours.
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The blockchain revolution paved the way for innovations. Businesses are tapping their vast potential to derive meaningful outcomes.
One such example is the MediBloc project. This article delves into the details of the MediBloc crypto project, its essential features, and more.
Let’s get started.
MediBloc Explained
MediBloc is creating a patient-centered health data ecosystem that protects individual privacy and enhances the reliability of health data by developing Panacea, a high-performing blockchain optimized for the exchange of health-related information.
The idea is to ensure a decentralized health data ecosystem where people will have sovereignty over the data and use the health-related inputs for their own needs.
MediBloc Crypto Project aims to tap the potential of the Panacea blockchain by utilizing the expertise of ICF in Cosmos SDK, Tendernint, and blockchain and the rich experience of MediBloc in the healthcare domain.
In addition, MediBloc envisions becoming the representative medical blockchain project of the Cosmos ecosystem across the globe. Besides, MediBloc will focus on securing the high scalability of the Panacea ecosystem.
MediBloc has been successfully selected by the ICF foundation to participate in ICF’s builder program.
Interchain Foundation (ICF)
Launched in 2017, Inter-chain Foundation (ICF) is a Swiss-based non-profit foundation focused on research and development of open and decentralized networks, particularly those of the Cosmos ecosystem. The ICF develops protocols to help organizations enjoy an internet of shared resources and enhance value creation.
About Builders Program
The ICF builders program offers support and guidance to a wide network of partners. Some of the services it provides include:
- Marketing and GTM strategy
- Engineering and product development
- Community and Governance
- Access to investors and partners.
Understanding Panacea ecosystem
Panacea blockchain essentially comprises the Cosmos SDK and Tendernint. Therefore, the benefits of both networks can be reaped.
Tendermint uses a partially synchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus mechanism. This enables Panacea to provide a high-performance and consistent network. On the flip side, Cosmos SDK deploys Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism offering various cryptographic operations such as tokens, governance, and more.
These features of Cosmos SDK and Tendermint are leveraged in Panacea, with the addition of some new features for developing the patient-centric healthcare data ecosystem.
Features of Panacea Blockchain
Some of the core features of the Panacea blockchain include the following:
Decentralized identity
It is imperative to prove your authority and authenticity, whether you are using web services on Web 3 or Web 2. That said, in a decentralized scenario, this can be achieved through DID.
Panacea offers DID management options that help users to identify the authenticity and integrity of their data without reliance on any third party. Anyone can create or update DIDs on Panacea, ensuring the integrity of the DID public keys.
In the MediBloc healthcare ecosystem, DIDs are used to prove who issued the data, who holds the data and with whom the holder has agreed to share the data. Data holders and data issuers sign on private keys on the DIDs, while data verifiers check that the data has not been tampered with since the time it was issued or shared.
Data Exchange Coordination
With Panacea, there is the option to exchange data between consumers and data providers. Data consumers publicly post their requirements and the payment they are willing to make. Data holders provide the data securely and earn rewards in the native cryptocurrency, the MediBloc coin, MED.
This on-chain data exchange Coordination requires some off-chain validations to verify the data. For instance, it’s possible that some data providers with malicious intent may send invalid data to consumers or data from unreliable sources. Thus it becomes essential for off-chain data validators to verify the correctness of the data before sending it to the data consumers.
Off-chain Components
The important off-chain components that play an integral role in data exchange coordination include:
Verifiable Credentials
Panacea Verifiable Credentials SDK lets data issuers in the healthcare space to issue certificates that are verifiable based on cryptographic keys and signatures.
As the Verifiable Credentials SDK works in tandem with DID management features of the Panacea blockchain, it follows a standard format. In addition, data receivers can verify credentials from data holders using their cryptographic public key corresponding to their DID.
To adhere to privacy requirements, data holders can showcase their data by masking certain sensitive information. It uses the Zero-knowledge- proof concept in conjunction with BBS+ signatures that ensures the data receivers can verify the data though some information is technically masked.
This lets consumers verify the data integrity though it is technically masked.
Data Exchange Validation using Confidential Computing
As mentioned earlier, the Panacea blockchain allows for data exchange coordination. That said, it is not recommended to validate/verify the data exchanged between the data providers and consumers using a public blockchain, as all data would be exposed to everyone. Even if the data is encrypted, the validator nodes must be able to decrypt it to validate the data integrity. All this entails risks as the data becomes vulnerable and could be passed on to anyone other than the intended receivers.
To address this challenge, an off-chain decentralized oracle powered by confidential computing (Intel SGX). All oracle nodes run on a secret enclave. All data remains encrypted, and oracle validator nodes decrypt it to validate the data integrity. In the case where the data is verified successfully, oracle nodes re-encrypt it for the data consumers. The essential advantage is that as the entire process takes place in a secret enclave, the decrypted data cannot be stolen by anyone, not even the oracle node operators.
To deal with the Byzantine problem, oracle nodes borrow voting power from the Panacea blockchain. The operators who run validators on Panacea only can run oracle nodes. This ensures that the oracle node has the same voting power as its corresponding validator. In case of the oracle node being malicious, its validator’s stake is reduced.
Secure Data Storage
DIDs, Verifiable Credentials, and Data Exchange Coordination play a significant role in secure data storage. However, considering the data storage and transmission aspects in decentralized environments, Inter-planetary File System (IPFS) looks like a viable solution.
IPFS uses content addressing in decentralized environments, and here the participants are unaware of each other’s IP addresses or ports. However, there are some downsides, too. IPFS is a public network and is not appropriate for storing private data, even if encrypted. Though it provides options for private clusters, it is not a recommended choice for data exchange on public blockchains.
In this regard, the MediBloc team is exploring other options for decentralized data storage, including edge databases.
Final thoughts
The MediBloc project focused on enhancing the Panacea blockchain aims to build a decentralized health data ecosystem that would help people own and use their health-related information as per their needs.
For more, follow MediBloc on Twitter or visit their website.
