Innovative Blockchain Patent Underlines DataTrails’ Leadership in Data Provenance and Integrity
Second patent addresses new challenges in verifying evidence in ever-growing distributed ledger storage requirements
SANTA CLARA, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, U.K. – April 16, 2024 – DataTrails, an innovator in integrity, transparency, and trust technology, has been granted a U.S. patent which details advanced methods of verifying blocks/evidence in Storage Optimized Blockchains.
Building on the patent granted last June, the company’s latest patent further enables practical scale for distributed ledgers, putting an end to the limitless storage requirements that come with ever-growing transaction data, while improving scalability, performance, availability and cost.
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is a crucial foundation for transparency and provenance in digital communication platforms. This extends well beyond the realms of cryptocurrency encompassing applications in multi-party supply chains, responsible AI, media transparency and authenticity, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives, the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as in regulatory compliance and auditing, among others.
While distributed ledgers record confirm and log a sequence of transactions, as the number of transactions increases more data is created necessitating an increase in storage capacity. What’s more, distributed ledgers are immutable, meaning nothing is ever deleted from the ledger, so storage requirements constantly grow. This leads to problems with scalability, performance, availability and cost.
The DataTrails patent on verifying blocks in storage optimized distributed ledgers enables more flexible storage of the chain data in parts without losing the end-to-end cryptographic verifiability of the chain. This addresses fears and costs of maintaining ever-growing data.
Jon Geater, co-founder and chief product officer, DataTrails, said:
“At DataTrails we’re working hard to make transparency tech and distributed ledgers practical for broader real-world, enterprise use. So much of the modern world runs on data, but if you can’t know or prove where that data came from, you expose your business and wider society to huge – and growing – risks.
“The DataTrails platform provides proof of origin, proof of provenance and proof of authenticity for any data, which is fundamental for any digital or physical supply chain. In implementing the technology behind this patent and continuing to innovate, we can deliver integrity, transparency and trust for the long term, without the burden of ever-increasing operational overheads.”
Known techniques exist today that aim to mitigate the blockchain storage problem by reducing the storage space required for the blocks – squashing empty blocks together or using compression to reduce the storage space requirement for all blocks in general. While these solutions help to a certain degree, they only delay the inevitable – and eventually the same storage issues arise.
The new DataTrails patent innovation, titled Data Structure Storage Optimisation Patent No. US 11,921,689, will be transformational in terms of the scalability and cost of deploying blockchains and distributed ledgers, and rapidly brings forward the time when distributed ledgers are ubiquitous across enterprise applications.
DataTrails aims to eliminate the time-wasting, expensive and error-prone processes required today to verify and validate information as it flows between companies, ensuring it is safe to use.
To learn more or get started using the product, please visit the company website at https://www.datatrails.ai/