Distributed ledgers

If you’ve been keeping current with the latest technology trends, you'll have heard a lot about Blockchains and Distributed Ledger Technology in recent years.

Transparent and immutable, robust, permanent and reliable. As a data record and transaction system, Distributed Ledger Technology has many attractive characteristics. But one of its biggest strengths is also one of its biggest weaknesses. Public blockchains are public. By design.

Real-world solutions

At Sidebinder, we understand that leaving an open data trail on a public ledger can be a concern for anyone interested in maintaining confidentiality. And many businesses and individuals have very legitimate reasons to prefer higher levels of privacy.

That's why we made Sidebinder.

Private database levels of security and access control, combined with blockchain standards of proof and verifiability. The best of both worlds.

Keeping it real

Like many revolutionary innovations, opinions on Distributed Ledger Technology are divided. They range from the core believers, who say that DLT changes everything and the world will never be the same again, all the way to the outright sceptics, who claim it offers nothing that existing technology cannot already deliver.

At Sidebinder, we consider ourselves enthusiastic blockchain believers but we don't see the distributed ledger model as a universal fit for every need. Yes, the world has changed, but it still mostly looks the same as it always has...

And in the real world, sometimes a regular encrypted database is exactly what the task demands.

Hashing and Anchoring

But by borrowing pioneering techniques from the blockchain domain, the data in a regular database can be summarized, chained and reduced to the same compact digest format used in blockchain implementations, a single representative value known as a hash. When that representative value is anchored into the existing public blockchain space, we can create a permanent, verifiable and immutable snapshot of the summarized state of the private data which is as valid and transparent as it would be if the data had been generated directly on a public blockchain.

In short, the hash representation of your data is public and verifiable, but your private data itself remains private.

Simple verification

Sidebinder connects to the public blockchain space using Chainpoint, the emerging open standard for anchoring data to the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.

A Chainpoint proof cryptographically links the hash digest of your Sidebinder data to a transaction on a blockchain. Anyone obtaining this proof can verify the integrity and timestamp of the hash digest. By matching the hash digest of your Sidebinder project with the hash digest stored on the public blockchain, the integrity of your private data can be verified without its contents being revealed.

Proven, reliable, affordable

This anchoring technique is the same technology strategy that already supports distributed ledger sidechains, a related software architecture which aims to bring greater levels of confidentiality to distributed ledger technology itself.

Sidebinder differs from sidechain technology by avoiding the need for expensive additional blockchain infrastructure, enabling even small-scale projects with limited budgets to benefit from blockchain trust and immutable digital audit trails at a price point that makes it accessible to everyone.

Is this you?

Are you a shipper looking to manage and share the documentation associated with a particular consignment? Spin up a Sidebinder chain for that project, and store all the relevant contracts, waybills, and other communications and paperwork together in the same private container. Share that container with all counterparties with an interest in the shipment. Anchor the Sidebinder chain to the public Bitcoin chain for instant digital audit and publicly verifiable proof of the container's contents.

Or perhaps you're an aspiring novelist, musician or photographer? Assert the copyright of your latest work by saving it to your Sidebinder chain container as you produce it, and anchoring the container's hash digest value into the public blockchain.

Let your imagination run free. Sidebinder will follow wherever you want to go.

Large or small

From large enterprise ventures to small personal projects, Sidebinder is for anyone who needs a reliable store of private data combined with an easy and publicly-verifiable means of proving the integrity of that data.

Applications include proofs of copyright, proofs of contract, timeline management projects, trade documentation, conveyancing, procurement agreements, construction projects and countless other commercial, legal, medical and educational use cases.

In fact, you're probably already thinking of ways you could use it in your own business. Whenever counterparties enter into a contract, social or business arrangement that might benefit from performance or status proofs, that's when Sidebinder comes in.