Hybrid Blockchain Content Storage with Off-Chain Encryption
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current blockchain technologies face challenges in protecting confidentiality, with public blockchains lacking privacy and private blockchains having complex infrastructure and limited scalability, making it difficult to ensure compliance with various regulatory requirements across jurisdictions.
Innovation Solution
A hybrid blockchain approach that separates transaction records from content, uses strong encryption to protect confidentiality, combines private blockchain elements into a single deployable unit, and integrates identity and access management to enable permissioned access, allowing for regulatory verification and secure key management, including support for quantum computing encryption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If public blockchain is used to ensure transparency and nonrepudiation, then transaction verification is improved, but content confidentiality is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the blockchain into two distinct layers: a public ledger that stores only transaction metadata (hashes, timestamps, participant identifiers) for transparency and verification, and a private off-chain storage system that holds the actual confidential content. This segmentation allows each layer to fulfill its specific function without compromising the other.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the confidential content from the blockchain ledger entirely, storing it only in private off-chain storage systems. The blockchain retains only the extracted essential verification data (hashes and metadata), thereby eliminating the conflict between public verification and private confidentiality.
2Loss of information
If private blockchain is used to protect confidentiality and provide permissioned access, then content security is improved, but infrastructure complexity increases and scalability is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary identity management system that mediates between users and the blockchain network. This intermediary handles authentication, authorization, and key management, thereby simplifying the infrastructure for participating organizations while maintaining the security benefits of private blockchain access control.
3Ease of operation
If encryption keys are stored centrally for easy access, then operation simplicity is improved, but security risk increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments encryption keys into multiple distinct key components or shards, distributing them across different secure locations or participants. No single entity holds the complete key, thereby reducing the security risk of centralized storage while maintaining the ability to decrypt content when needed through coordinated access.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a nested key management structure where encryption keys are protected by additional layers of security mechanisms, such as hierarchical key hierarchies or nested cryptographic protocols, allowing secure access control without centralized key storage.
Data Source
AI summary
This specification relates to methods and systems for content management. One of the methods includes: receiving data identifying a user; verifying that the user is an authorized user; receiving initial content from the authorized user; encrypting the initial content using an encryption key to produce encrypted content; forwarding the encrypted content for storage; creating content storage metadata; encrypting the content storage metadata to provide encrypted content storage metadata; and forwarding the encrypted content storage metadata to a blockchain such as a public ledger.