Witness wants to change the way we verify digital content

Analysis and growth firm, Witness, has launched a verification protocol after it secured $3.5 million in a seed funding spherical led by Huan Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures and a handful of angel buyers.

The corporate is led by former Paradigm, Google and Fb engineer Sina Sabet and a former enterprise investor at Framework Ventures, Joe Name.

Witness protocol is designed to subject digital possession utilizing present blockchain expertise. In an interview with Blockworks, Name notes that Witness permits folks to achieve proofs over their information which might characterize issues like attestations signed by two completely different customers.

“That information will be consumed by any utility as a result of they’ll confirm it even when the info isn’t absolutely posted on-chain,” Name stated.

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Transaction prices stay a giant onboarding downside for crypto merchandise at the moment, with many customers unwilling to leap by way of a number of hoops as a way to check out a brand new product.

What many functions have resorted to as a way to acquire extra person curiosity is deploying their very own blockchain options, with cheaper transaction prices. Nonetheless, Name stated that these options nonetheless don’t deal with the core subject of getting to pay a number of charges for every motion you make on the blockchain.

What the witness protocol is ready to obtain is to make these merchandise free to make use of, by way of extending possession and verification throughout present blockchain networks.

“The novelty right here is that functions can enable customers to obtain this data, and different functions can nonetheless belief it as a result of they know when it was issued,” Name stated. “That’s the coordination paradigm that we’re attempting to unlock at an enormous scale by extending this useful resource that blockhains present in a novel means.”

The way in which that the witness protocol is ready to obtain that is by receiving hashes from customers that characterize their information. On the blockchain, hashes discuss with a digital footprint that’s composed of letters and numbers which characterize a doc or set of knowledge.

“If I present you a proof that claims, this hash existed on this block, then you understand that the info that the hash represents needed to have additionally existed at that block,” Name stated. “What you’re left with is what we name witness information, which is the mixture of the proof and the info that represents the hash that the proof represents.”

As soon as these proofs are obtained, Name explains that there can be no reliance on witness protocol as a centralized middleman, which implies that customers can have sovereignty over their information and the power for anybody to confirm that information.

Witness protocol can be utilizing this newest fundraise to proceed rising its engineering group, Name notes.