The Keep network ensures privacy and prevents tampering of private information that individuals use for decentralized applications. It does that by storing private data off-chain in information packets that blockchains can use without actually having access to the data. Thus, preventing misuse of private individual data.
Context
We live in a world where our data is increasingly collected, traced and monetised to drive profits. Unfortunately, the line between collecting data and privacy infringement has totally blurred out. Blockchain technology has paved the path towards transparency and tamper-proof ledger technology that allows individuals to have more control over their data.
A real life example would be your health records stored on a ledge for doctors to access, if you allow them to. However, how do you make sure that the same data would not be compromised? That is the main conundrum here, balancing transparency and maintaining privacy. Keep network aims to provide a solution to the same.
What is the Keep network?
It is a privacy layer for blockchains that allows users and apps to store data privately. Since plenty of decentralized applications (dapps) running blockchain such as Ethereum require private information such as health, credit or financial records to operate. To protect this information, Keep network enables users to store private data off-chain and allows decentralized applications to remotely access the data without actually sharing the data.
How does Keep work?
Keep acts as an additional layer between users and blockchains (decentralised applications and such) in order to provide privacy to user data. The network aims to incentivise a global network of computers to randomly store private information. It does that by storing private data on off-chain containers called “ Keeps”. Keeps are randomly assigned by the network to a system of participants called signers. These keeps can later be deployed on public blockchains via smart contracts without compromising or exposing the privacy of the data.
These signers play their crucial role by helping in storing and managing the off-chain containers (keeps). The source of randomness is Keep’s core application, The Random Beacon. This Beacon also ensures that an individual signer can not decode and tamper with the information stored in their network.
In order to become a signer, each participant stakes KEEP tokens in exchange for a service fee. The service entails encryption and data storage to maintain the integrity of the data. That is how Keep encrypts private data and maintains privacy through multi party (signers) computation.
The KEEP token
KEEP is the Keep network’s native token. It powers the network and supports all apps built on top of the network. Signers are assigned work by using the KEEP token and enable signers to earn rewards in terms of KEEP tokens. Work delegation is also directly proportional to the amount of KEEP tokens a signer holds. There is a stable supply of KEEP tokens which determines how many pieces the KEEP tokens are divided into. Additionally, about 25% of the KEEP supply is kept for public distribution, creating more value for the ecosystem.
Over time as the Keep protocol gets adopted, more Dapp users will not have to worry about privacy of their data. Users will enjoy a global privacy layer between the dapps and their health records, credit score and financial information.
