PRIViLEDGE: Privacy in Distributed Ledgers

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have emerged as one of the most revolutionary developments in recent years, with the goal of eliminating centralised intermediaries and installing distributed trusted services.

### Objective PRIViLEDGE aims to develop cryptographic protocols enabling privacy, anonymity, and efficient decentralised consensus for distributed ledgers and blockchains. There are four main objectives:

1. To provide efficient privacy-enhancing cryptography (PEC) for enabling the execution of smart contracts on blockchains such that the privacy of users and the privacy of data is respected.

2. To develop and demonstrate cryptographic tools that aim at anonymity, transparency, and security and maintain a balance between these goals, for practical deployments of DLT and blockchains.

3. To construct efficient cryptographic blockchain consensus protocols that rely on advances in cryptography, satisfying the contradicting demands of verifiability, transparency, and stake-based governance.

4. To provide effective exploitation of the PRIViLEDGE cryptography in real operational environments, for enabling privacy in distributed ledgers.

   Consortium

   The PRIViLEDGE consortium consists of ten partners from across the European Union:

• Guardtime AS (Estonia)

• IBM Research - Zurich (Switzerland)

• University of Tartu (Estonia)

• Technical University Eindhoven (The Netherlands)

• Smartmatic-Cybernetica (Estonia)

• University of Salerno (Italy)

• GRNET (Greece)

• GUNET (Greece)

• I.O.Research (IOHK) (joining soon.)

  The project kicked off in January 2018 and is due to last for 3 years.

  The PRIViLEDGE project is funded through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 780477.