World, Trust Stamp each unveil biometric MPC partnerships

World has launched a new anonymized multi-party computation (AMPC) system for processing iris biometrics that it says provides unprecedented data privacy.

Anonymized iris biometric data is stored in a database by blockchain engineering and research company Nethermind, and the AMPC is operated by Nethermind, along with the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and UC Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence (RDI). Neither World Foundation and Tools for Humanity operate nodes. World worked with TACEO, Inversed Tech, Modulus Labs and Automata to develop the AMPC system.

The Blockchain Center of the University of Zurich in Switzerland has also agreed to help with work on securing the storage of the anonymized data.

The new system builds on the open source quantum secure multi-party computation (SMPC) unveiled by World a year ago to anonymize and secure the iris data or World ID holders who have had their biometrics deduplicated by one of the company’s orbs. The data is anonymized before being passed to the user’s device as an iris code, which is then encrypted end-to-end for transmission to each AMPC compute node, World explains.

A key difference noted by World between the AMPC and the previous SMPC model is the transmission of a match or failure to match result only in binary, rather than plaintext. The “iris masks” which handle noise and highlight relevant features during biometric verification are also shared in encrypted, rather than plaintext form.

Each node runs on eight NVIDIA H100 GPUs, and the entire system can carry out “50 million pairwise uniqueness comparisons per second,” according to a company blog post.

World announced just weeks ago that it has raised $135 million to help fuel its international expansion plans.

Trust Stamp and Partisia collaborate on biometric MPC

Multi-party computation is becoming increasingly popular as a method of preserving the privacy of biometric data processed in the cloud.

A strategic partnership announced by Trust Stamp and secure data sharing provider Partisia provides another example.

Their goal is to develop more accessible and resilient biometric binding between a credential and its bearer, through Trust Stamp’s biometric technology and Partisia’s MPC expertise. Trust Stamp’s technology enables cryptographic identity verification without the storage of biometric templates or private keys, according to the announcement.

The partners will use the Global Omnichain Data Service (GODS) Network to provide an interoperable ID credential format that can be reused across multiple platforms to eliminate repeated onboarding processes and reduce the sharing of personal data.

“Our collaboration is about accelerating the industry’s progress toward delivering the ease users expect — while enabling a secure, reusable identity across platforms. It’s a step toward a future where seamless login replaces repetitive onboarding and protects personal data,” says Jonathan Patscheider, VP of Trust Stamp. “By joining forces with Partisia, we are making it easier for organizations to adopt best-in-class privacy-first technologies without compromising performance or user experience.”

Trust Stamp also signed up Digital Platformer as a strategic partner for its decentralized biometric authentication system development in February.

Article Topics

anonymization  |  biometric data  |  biometric template protection  |  blockchain  |  data privacy  |  face biometrics  |  iris biometrics  |  multi-party computation  |  Nethermind  |  Partisia  |  Trust Stamp  |  World