Solution Strategy

On this page, you will learn about:

  1. Summary of the fundamental decisions and solution strategies that shape the Keychain architecture

Strategy

We solved the Agency Problem by providing a decentralized data provenance software infrastructure with which you can secure your data at rest and in flight by integrating the Keychain client software modules into your application.

Data provenance refers to the ability to answer the following three questions about data:

  1. Has the data been altered/tampered with?

  2. Who created/approved the data?

  3. Who has access to the data?

The intent is that by allowing companies to solve data provenance in a self-sovereign way, they will be able to take back responsibility for the security of their data in a wide range of environment configurations, thereby solving the Agency Problem.

Given that data usage and sharing tends to span geo-political borders, data provenance is best done with consistent security threat model, immutable, and decentralization. For that reason, blockchains play a key role in the Keychain system design.

Keychain however does not store any user data on the blockchain with the exception of public keys, given developers the freedom to communicate and store data outside the blockchain. In short, the blockchain is used only for validation of cryptographic identity for the purpose of establishing the provenance of data that exists outside the blockchain.

Another solution strategy taken by the Keychain team is to provide native support for the major computing platforms to enhance security.