The Worldcoin Foundation has unveiled a Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) system. It claims that this technology is poised to redefine the protection of biometric data.
It emerges as essential in an era where such data’s application extends from everyday services to complex security systems.
Worldcoin Explains the Working of SMPC
In an email conversation with BeInCrypto, Worldcoin explained the necessity of advanced data protection. It cited a projected increase in the biometric system market to $76.70 billion by 2029 from $30.77 billion in 2022, according to a Fortune Business Insights report.
Furthermore, data breaches have surged, with a 20% increase in incidents year-over-year and a doubling in victim numbers, according to research by MIT Professor Stuart Madnick.
SMPC technology divides a secret into multiple parts, distributed among several parties. Consequently, no single entity can reconstruct the full secret alone, enhancing security.
This method proves particularly resistant to threats, including those from quantum computing. Historically, the resource-intensive nature of SMPC has restricted its widespread application, particularly in handling extensive biometric data.
To overcome these limitations, the Worldcoin Foundation, along with teams from TACEO and Tools for Humanity, developed a scalable and cost-effective version of SMPC. They claim that this version is adept at managing large data volumes without compromising security.
According to Jannick Preiwisch, the Worldcoin Foundation’s Data Protection Officer, this system complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation and other data protection regimes worldwide.
“Implementation of the new SMPC system enabled the Worldcoin Foundation to delete old iris codes by permanently encrypting them to SMPC shares that by themselves cannot be related to an identified person,” Preiwisch told BeInCrypto
Despite this development, Worldcoin (WLD) trades at $4.90, down by around 3% in the past 24 hours.
