As blockchain adoption continues to grow, enterprises around the world are looking at how digital assets can improve their business. But for most businesses, the challenge isn’t about regulations or smart contracts. Their main concern remains the secure custody of digital assets.
And, the increased momentum of real-world assets (RWAs) coming on chain highlights the need for that secure custody. From the moment we launched the Chia Blockchain, we recognized the unique role enterprises would play in the growth of the industry and we purpose-built our technology – the Chia Blockchain and Chia Cloud Services Platform – to address the challenges these organizations would face.
Looking Under the Hood
Blockchain transactions require signatures generated by private keys. Where these keys are stored and how they are accessed to generate those signatures is the fundamental problem of custody.
In a simple consumer-grade wallet, keys may be stored in a file and used by wallet software, leaving them vulnerable to theft. This makes new user onboarding very simple because it only requires downloading wallet software, but this comes at the cost of security.
Many professional and enterprise solutions use a different approach: dedicated hardware devices that generate and store keys and will generate signatures without exposing the private keys.
To add further protection, some wallets (both enterprise and consumer-grade) may require signatures from multiple devices to protect against theft or unauthorized use. In practice, this means that after a transaction is initiated, multiple people will typically need to plug in their signing device, generate a signature, and then submit it.
And while this process is more secure, it’s not enough. It adds cost and complexity, and often still lacks enterprise controls. An organization still needs to protect the entire process: from purchasing the devices, to distributing them to the correct users, educating the users on the technology, and preparing for scenarios where some devices are lost or stolen.
Early on, we recognized the friction this process creates when an organization wants to buy, sell, or even issue their own digital assets. So we drastically simplified secure key management.
Our Approach
The Chia Blockchain paired with the Chia Cloud Services Platform goes beyond simple custody solutions to provide Enterprise organizations the tools and security they need.
Enterprises can now create vaults that require signatures from key stakeholders for any transaction. If keys are lost, they can go to a recovery provider for help rekeying their vault and the recovery provider is not able to spend or take their Digital Assets.
And to further support adoption with reasonable governance processes, the Chia blockchain supports secp256r which creates unique compatibility with Apple’s Secure Enclave that Ethereum-based blockchains can’t offer today due to their use of secp256k1 signatures. This enables Chia to handle secure key management on any iPhone, without the additional expense or complexity involved with signing devices such as Ledger.
Using Chia technology as the foundation for Digital Assets, enterprises can now buy, hold, trade and issue Digital Assets safely and securely. Chia’s model of delivering enterprise grade software and workflows from the Chia Cloud Service Platform with the best in class security offered by the Chia Signer on iOS platforms sets the new standard for what enterprises should expect of their blockchain technology and what they can now do with their digital assets.