Irfan Khan
Vikram Anand
Vishwas Anand
Irfan Khan
Founder @ Hypermine
Explain what is Hypermine and the ‘Hypersign’ project?
Hypermine as an organization was conceived in order to create a world where human privacy is a fundamental right, where our data is secure and belongs to us.
A global currency that has real value; where piracy does not exist and freedom of expression is encouraged.
Where wealth is shared to reduce poverty and all governance is transparent and trusted to make life better for everyone.
What will be the end goal of the ‘Hypersign’ project?
The Hypersign Project was born from this vision that personal data protection and user data privacy and is a fundamental human right and that our data should belong to us and can only be accessed by others if and when it is authorized by us.
In the near future, Hypersign - will be what we like to call a “Service Provider”, which is akin to present-day telecommunication service providers.
Hypersign will evolve into the next generation of identity service providers where users will be able to store their personal data securely and no one will have access to this data unless it is authorized by the owners of the data.
The users will control who gets access to their data and for how long and will know exactly how their personal data is being used and for what.
This will mark the end of the KYC industry as we know it and comply with all major privacy regulations.
Hypersign will give control of user data back to the owners and the owners will decide how they want to store their personal data and where they want to share and to what extent and to be aware of their personal data.
Vikram Anand
Fullstack dev & Co-Founder @ Hypermine
Explain the security design behind the ‘Hypersign’ technology?
From a security perspective, we are trying to stay updated with the market. When it comes to infrastructure the security has to be implemented across different parts right!.
For example, our tech stack majorly is divided into 2 - 3 components when it comes to end customers.
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Mobile Authenticator (Android/ Ios)
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Credential Vault (offline / cloud)
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Auth Server
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Database
For Mobile Authenticator we are using TEE/Keychains along with biometric to ensure the data kept locally while the app is running is secure.
For credential vault, we are using PBKDEF with Aes encryption which is currently the standard in the market.
Apart from this, we follow the standard protocol of AWS/GCP and we do regular pen-testing on our servers and database instances making sure our setup is decently secure. We also had some bounty’s in past on our core-protocol.
Really lucky that we got hold of some Indian pen-testers and ethical hackers who are always ready for some hack bounties.
What problem is ‘Hypersign’ seeking to solve to the end-user with the Blockchain and in what sectors can be implemented?
To understand the benefit for end-user we should first understand the problems for end-users, with the growing popularity of mobile devices in India and South East Asia, We have seen a huge number of users accessing the world wide web which is currently called web 2.0.
Now the web2.0 was built completely on a siloed approach where central parties have control of user credentials.
The problem with this is when we start accessing a huge amount of online platforms we literally don’t have a trail of where and what all personal information we have provided to the service providers.
With web3.0 coming soon this is going to change where the apps are going to be built more user-centric.
Hypersign wants to provide an infrastructure for end-users to manage their credentials, You can think of it as a vault for your credentials.
The benefit you get is that now at least you know all the credentials that have been issued to you.
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You can send a request to revoke to the service provider.
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You can log in without passwords so you do not need to remember passwords.
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You can sign consent for transactions in centralized banks, hence dependency of OTP’s are removed.
And all these boil down to one thing building an identity system that is privacy-focused and getting the end-user ready for web3.0.
Vishwas Anand
Core Protocol Dev & Co-Founder @ Hypermine
Describe briefly as a developer the Hypersign architecture?
As you know Hypersign is a next Generation Identity management infrastructure built on Self sovereign identity (SSI) standards, it works on the principle of something called the Issuance-verification paradigm which can be fit into many different use cases like authentication, transaction verification, ticket booking, etc.
The Issuance verification paradigm works with three stakeholders:
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End-User: The one who has personal data i.e. user data.
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Issuer: The one who verifies user data and issues credentials based on user data.
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Verifier: The one who verifies credentials and provides service to the user.
The flow starts when the user requests a credential from the issuer by providing his personal data. The issuer verifies those data and issues a cryptographically signed document called verifiable credential.
The user when wants to avail of service from any service provider signs the verifiable credential and presents that to the service provider.
The service provider verifies the digital signatures of both, the user as well as the issuer he trusts to ensure that the right user is presenting the credential and the credential was actually issued by the issuer he trusts.
On successful verification, he let the user access the resource.
It may also happen that issuer and verifies are the same system depending on the use case. For example, a website having a registration page and login page is an issuer as well as a verifier.
What type of Blockchain supports the ‘Hypersign’ project and what makes it different from other security products?
Hypersign is going to be a hybrid blockchain network built based on AeTernity’s Hyperchain protocol.
The Hypersign identity network has the Proof Of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithms but relies on Aeternity’s Proof Of Work(PoW) main network for providing security, hence hybrid.
We are all aware of the scalability problem of PoW systems.
Although they have achieved network security by burning CPU cycles to randomly hand the power to users depending on their computational efforts - this is a slow and costly process, which relies on having a vast and decentralized network of miners.
On the other hand, while the PoW solution distributes leadership based on computational power, PoS does it based on so-called stake, which in most cases means token supply.
Pure Proof of Stake (PoS) solution is much more energy-efficient, but it comes with some serious issues like nothing at stake, stake grinding, long-range attacks, etc.
The Hypersign network achieves security by connecting to its parent to PoW network and achieves scalability by its native PoS consensus-based network.
The PoS solution is also fairly cost-effective and high-performing for consumers in terms of transaction fees and throughput.
One thing which makes Hypersign protocol unique is, its ability to provide Mutual authentication.
What I mean by that is, normally when a user tries to access any system, the system verifies the user credential, in Hypersign, the user also gets to verify the authenticity of the website before providing any of his personal details.
This two-way or mutual authentication helps to solve the Phishing attacks to great extent and ensures that a user does not accidentally end up giving his data to someone he does not trust or know.