Exclusive interview about Dante Interview-Interview Record

Cross positioned itself as a project incubation team at the beginning of its establishment, Cross also set up an ecological project interview section for participants to understand the project from overall perspectives.

This is the first interview of PlatON ecological project.

Interviewer: PlatON Cross-JIE

Interviewee: Dante Network-CEO Wang Yue

First of all, could you please introduce Dante Network in details, since some newcomers may have less understanding of the project.

Well,firstly, talking about Dante Network, it is a Layer2 privacy storage network based on PlatON ecosystem, which is designed to solve the private data storage issue. The mission of Dante Network is to become the security station for the free circulation of digital assets, with other contributors in PlatON ecosystem, turning to be the key part to protect data transmit, storage, calculation, etc., for all users in the ecosystem, while ensuring the data owners keep the data sovereignty and protect their information privacy to gain their due rights and interests in the process of the increasing value of their data circulation. Secondly, from a very simple and direct perspective, we are a decentralized network for privacy storage. To be more easier-understanding, I’d like to use a metaphor which may not be very appropriate but clear, it is the filecoin that is built on PlatON.

What is your primary purpose to build Dante Network?

We can’t avoid mentioning data when talking about Dante, since the slogan of Dante is to become the security station for the free circulation of digital assets. It sounds abstract, then I’ll start to talk about the two major ways of how personal data is generated to further demonstrate.

Well, the first way is generating passively, this kind of data generation usually happens when we want to obtain a product service provided by an Internet manufacturer, and then we authorize the app to read our device. Otherelse, when we interact with an Internet product, the background records our behavior trajectory in the network.

The second way of data generation happens actively. For example, content producers, they write articles or film videos and publish their work on social media. Then these data or contents are stored into the server of the platform manufacturers. What’s more, there is a cloud drive that we are all very familiar with. When you upload some contracts, or some other privacy information and files or pictures to the cloud disk, honestly, this data is like the stripper for the internet manufacturers.

Modern people’s way of life is based on the Internet. While obtaining convenience, we also sacrifice the privacy and security of personal data, no matter whether those manufacturers who intercept and disclose our personal data intentionally or unintentionally.

I didn’t find the authoritative report of personal data disclosure incidents in 2020. I’ll talk about some sensational cases. Facebook accepted a $5 billion ticket for leaking users’ privacy. Marriott Hotels leaked 5.2 million guest information again. And Zoom, the world’s largest video conference application, was exposed to serious privacy vulnerabilities. According to the investigation report given by Verizon, 70% of data leakage incidents point to external attacks and 30% point to insiders.

This is the current situation of the Internet. We enjoy the convenience of the Internet, it has become an inseparable part of our life, but it also brings the problems of data security and privacy peeping.

In fact, our team tried many schemes before Dante, and we finally chose to build Dante network after a comprehensive evaluation due to three main reasons. Firstly, we believe the decentralization movement could bring the ideological enlightenment of personal data sovereignty in this era. No group shows the same spirit with blockchain users that are determined to protect personal data sovereignty. Secondly, blockchain offers the new collaboration mode that directly replaces the traditional cloud-based business.

Due to the existence of TOKEN in the incentive layer, the team only needs to consider the technical implementation without considering the problems of the storage server and engine-room. Thirdly, blockchain always keeps the faster pace of cutting-edge technologies exploration. We always say where we stand depends on where we sit. In our case, users’ pursuit of strict privacy protection is not something an enterprise could be willing to offer out of interest, then, the giant tech companies, as vested interests in big data analysis, are literally willing to change themselves, I highly doubt it. Honestly speaking, they only want to protect users’ data here from being used by other enterprises.

Dante network hopes to verify the authenticity of the stored data without seeing the specific data through technologies such as Zero-Knowledge Proof and multi-party secure computing, further protecting the security of data privacy.

How is the overall situation of Dante?

Previously, we made two rounds of airdrop incentives for PlatON users. At present, the total number of DAT holders has reached 18755. Due to some other reasons that we all know, we were forced to postpone the establishment of online and offline salons. As for community operation part, we estimately have over 4000 users. It is an exciting start. Well, we are also trying to expand our community globally. We have official twitter and medium accounts and we just started to build our Telegram group and channels. The latest information, news and activities will be updated to our users in the groups and official channels both domestically and overseas.

As for R&D, we now map our development for three stages, the advanced stage, the privacy verification stage and the privacy transaction stage. We are at middle of the advanced stage now. Well, the current stage we are focusing on constructing the main function frame, involving the deep development in contract layer and node layer and overcoming key technology and algorithm problems. For more details you can check on our white paper. It has both English and Chinese versions.

1.Contract layer

At present, tech group has completed all the development work of threshold multisignature security management contract and PRC-20 token contract under threshold multisignature management contract. Also, the testing and verification work about these parts has also been preliminarily completed. In terms of storage transaction contracts and storage verification contracts, the development of on-chain interaction functions has been basically completed.

2.Node layer

Dante team is conducting technical research on the off-chain verifiable computation and remote attestation procedure in the Advance stage. At the same time, the advanced research work for the following stages is also in progress in an orderly manner, including off-chain verifiable computing based on Zero-Knowledge Proof, efficient on-chain storage transaction mechanism, storage incentive mechanism, etc. Finally, the existing achievements in technology development have been partially disclosed on GitHub, which can be viewed by interested partners.

（Github Link：https://github.com/dantenetwork）

The progress of the overall project, such as the launch of the test-net and the mainnet that users are most concerned about, is explained in the project progress section of the official website

（Official website：https://dantechain.com/index_en.html）

We heard that Dante Network cooperated with Xiamen University (XMU) and achieved consensus to build a Joint Laboratory of Information Security and Data Science. How is the project going?

Yes, this is really exciting progress. We signed a 3-year contract to cooperate with XMU at the beginning of June. This joint lab indicates that we achieved the consensus to finding further technical exploration in blockchain academically, which also showed our determination to dive deep into the practical use of privacy-preserving computation.

The main target of this cooperation is to study deeper into storage transaction verification, trusted verification about storage tasks, off-chain privacy exchange, etc, which are based on Zero-knowledge Proof.

As so far, the academy side is diligently exploring theoretical, algorithm and technique breakthroughs about on-chain private transaction,off-chain verifiable execution environment and off-chain private data interaction, practically combining with the real landing scenario of Dante Network. And later, Dante group will develop the overall frame and implement the all the findings into our network to achieve usability and offer private data storage.

How was your consideration when Dante Network promoted a series of activities to motivate LAT holders from the very beginning? What is the reason for such a distribution method?

This is about the consist of our community. We mentioned before that Dante Network’s early community users have high overlap with PlatON community users. Most of our current users are also users of the PlatON community. You can interpret it as that we live in the same ecosystem, sharing similar value proposition and expectation, thus, we work together to pursue the same goals and values. So the incentive plans we offered were aiming to promote the friendly interaction between two communities and contribute to a better communication environment.

Well, as for the different distribution methods, we have thought long and hard, since it is hard to be extremely fair. And we do hope to consider all situations that satisfy our users. When we designed the second round distribution equation that depends on different intervals of LAT holding numbers, we statistically collected the wallet addresses of LAT holders for a period and made an analysis of the open interests and validity. And there was encouraging news during the whole process. We found out that there was a big growth in the number of LAT holders till the second round activity. There were 35424 LAT wallet addresses before the activity, and it reached 41321 after.

Honestly speaking, we want to encourage more normal users to join in constructing the community together, since we value each user no matter how many LAT you own. Interest is the important thing. We would like to attract more real enthusiasm to join our community to promote creation and new attemption. That’s why we choose to design a distribution method that tends to be more friendly towards normal users.

What is the follow-up plan for Dante Network?

The main tasks of the current stage are to complete the on-chain storage service contract, and set up detailed on-chain service design, development and testing. If everything goes well, we will start to deploy the launching of Dante Test Net which is equipped with off-chain trusted storage service at the end of this year, and start internal testing. At that time, the community will be opened to developers and enthusiasm, they will be rewarded according to their contribution.

• Mainnet launch

We estimate that test-net will be launched at the end of this year. Then we will finish the mapping from DAT-Test to DAT at 1:1 ratio. The functional and security test of the test-net will be completed in the 1st quarter in 2022. The underlying privacy encryption mechanism is upgraded in combination with PlatON’s privacy-preserving computing technique system. Then we are on the threshold of first stage mainnet landing.

• Further development

Our technical team will further carry out the research and development of Zero-Knowledge Proof privacy transaction and off-chain privacy data channel mechanism, and complete the upgrade of the storage verification mechanism, in combination with PlatON’s verifiable computing techniques. At that time, multiple functions related to privacy computing will be gradually launched.

From the overall aspect of the project, Dante would like to protect the privacy security of data storage comprehensively. In the future, we will land multiple ToC and ToB application scenarios, and try our best to achieve the real business landing of Dante network privacy storage.

Well, the arrangement of each stage of the project is displayed on our official website, and we now also published our fortnightly report to update our technique progress. In the community, we will also update the completion of each work synchronously. You can pay attention to our weekly report and publicity at any time. Moreover, Community development lovers are also welcome to communicate with us. In addition, users who are more interested in community construction can also learn about the latest arrangements for each event from WeChat official account, Telegraph group, Twitter or Medium.

Exploring more Dante details please check the following link:

Dante Website: https://dantechain.com/index_en.html

Dante Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanteNetwork

Dante Telegram: https://t.me/Dante_Network