MPC
Zenrock's Multi-Party Computation
From the private key controlling the digital assets, Zenrock's MPC protocol generates multiple independent secrets which are then distributed between MPC Nodes.
When an asset owner wants to sign a transaction or generate a public key, the request gets picked up by the MPC nodes which individually calculate their share of the key and signature and combined create the key material or signature respectively. Afterwards, the public key or the signature get published to the zrSign smart contract.
The benefits of MPC
By replacing cumbersome private key management with MPC, Zenrock makes digital assets immediately accessible, without compromising security. This allows users to enjoy the full benefit of digital assets as programmable money, and broadcast transactions instantly without fear of loss.
The zrSign protocol transforms a simple custody solution into an EVM-agnostic scaling mechanism—enabling digital asset managers to leapfrog the settlement delays, privacy issues, and security loopholes that arise from the centralized management of private keys.
Unprecedented security
Private keys stored online are a prime target for hackers, who have looted billions in crypto assets by attacking centralized hot wallets.
MPC offers the possibility of storing crypto assets without compromising security. But when the devices running the MPC protocol are centralized, a single point of failure is reintroduced.
Zenrock's MPC distributes private key shares over a distributed MPC architecture, completely eliminating the single point of failure. Each MPC Node on the network has its own secrets. But the loss of a single secret doesn’t give an attacker any advantage in gaining control over the digital assets.
Instead of hacking a single machine and walking away with the private key, a hacker would need to compromise all the machines in the MPC Network.
Flexible governance
MPC nodes can be mapped to specific organizational requirements, with various different numbers of trustees arranged in sets and subsets, and limited by specific thresholds.
Maintain senior claims
Instead of surrendering asset control as with centralized implementations of MPC, Zenrock's trustless MPC implementation allows digital asset owners to retain senior claims over assets in custody.
At no point does the asset owner lose the right to run the MPC protocol. This allows them to exercise the highest priority claim over the assets at all times, reflecting the true ideals of crypto asset ownership—as laid out by pioneering laws in Wyoming and elsewhere—where control of the private keys is equivalent to possession.
Why MPC is the future
Just as Bitcoin takes the trust out of transactions by removing the third party, MPC can take the trust out of private key management.
But unless the MPC protocol is driven by decentralized consensus, it risks replicating the same security loopholes and settlement delays of centralized private key management.
Consensus-driven MPC liberates digital assets from these problems, setting them free to be securely staked, loaned, or traded in the rapidly growing DeFi ecosystem.