Ruby Protocol — AMA Recap
Fellow Rubies,
Welcome back to Ruby Protocol.
In case you missed our recent AMA with our strategic partner — NFT3, we have you covered.
Here’s a summary of what we discussed. In this AMA, the speaker/GM from Ruby Protocol — Mindaugas (@s4vick4s) dived deep into details on the idea, utility, collaborations, unique features of Ruby Protocol, and our expansion plans and roadmap updates.
Read the AMA to know more about our updates, news, and announcements.
Q: Hi Mindaugas, thanks for joining us. Can you give us an overview of your background in Crypto?
A: I am Mindaugas, General Manager at Ruby Protocol. I have also co-founded Sukhabvati Labs and InvArch Network.
I was always very fascinated by the core characteristics of Blockchain and decentralized web3 solutions, so I jumped into Crypto completely 6 years ago.
I have recently graduated from Harvard Business School, and have 13+ years of management & marketing leadership experience: A number of strategic and hands-on marketing solutions executed for global brands, and tech start-ups. Built and scaled product and marketing teams up to 40+ worldwide.
Q: We have to ask this. What is Ruby Protocol? Can you give us a general idea of how it can help us?
Ruby protocol is a private data management framework for Web 3.0. We propose to implement a privacy middle-layer interacting with multi-chain. You can think of Ruby as a fine-grained private data access-control gateway across different entities and organizations both in the decentralized and traditional financial world.
Built on functional encryption, the Ruby protocol will be the true embodiment of the decentralization spirit of the cryptocurrency movement. All the encrypted data will be stored in a decentralized cloud such as IPFS.
Decentralized functional encryption will be adopted to satisfy the users’ privacy needs. Moreover, our policy management layer will make sure the design of the underlying attribute and policy universe is well-tuned to the regulatory compliance requirement.
Ruby will also design and implement a private payment scheme specifically tailored for the monetization of private data. Ruby protocol is not only the next-generation privacy protocol for Web 3.0 in a multi-chain world but is also ready to open a brand-new chapter for regulatory-compliant decentralized financial service.
Here is a short explainer so everybody can get a simple but nicely condensed message!
Q: So what are the latest developments in Ruby Protocol?
A: We have recently finished 2 milestones at the web3 foundation grants programme.
We have also been accepted to Substrate’s Builders Program where we will soon start executing on the next 3 milestones.
We have recently started working on our first PoC that will show the underlying technology — functional encryption in action for a few of our value propositions like DID and NFT-gated event access.
You should definitely hear more from us in October when we’ll finish our PoC! Stay tuned!
Q: Apart from the technical developments, your team has done a lot to change awareness. Why is that?
It’s the bear market so it is super important for us to continue build valuable partnerships so both projects (both sides can help each other), and do cross-marketing activities:
We have recently announced a lot of Partnerships:
We have partnered with Subsquid, an indexing solution that enables Web3 builders to gain access to on-chain data on their terms.
Ruby Protocol has officially entered a strategic partnership with Tribe, Singapore’s first government-supported blockchain ecosystem builder, that connects talents and global opportunities to drive the frontier tech ecosystem forward.
OnFinality, Polkadot’s leading blockchain infrastructure provider, adds Ruby Network Spec to its marketplace supporting over 60 networks.
We were also happy to announce a strategic partnership with DoraHacks, an active global developer community and leading hacker organization that acts as a bridge, connecting hackers to enterprise challenges and entrepreneurial ideas.
Last but not least Ruby Protocol now joins hands with Prove Anything to make our contributions to the Web3 world.
Prove Anything is an open protocol for proof and authenticity built on the blockchain that connects people and brands to the Web3 world through the products they own. They have created a toolset that includes dynamic Certificates of Authenticity that act as digital bridges between manufacturer, retailer, and customer. A single connection creating multiple access points to their preferred communication channels for product information, recalls, marketing and research.
Q: Can you talk more about the Ruby Protocol PoC?
Yes! I have recently shown the scheme and talked about it in our DeData Berlin Salon event in Berlin, Germany a few weeks ago!
The main idea of our PoC is to allow a dApp to perform access control over encrypted data or even an encrypted event using attribute-based encryption (ABE) and a key encapsulation mechanism. The access control (AC) policy could be defined over any on-chain data such as the ownership of a particular NFT, how many DeFi tokens the user owns, whether he/she belongs to a particular DAO, or some off-chain status such as whether he/she is older than a certain age. Only those satisfying the predefined AC policy can decrypt the encrypted message.
More concretely, in the Ruby PoC, the SDK will encrypt a secret message using the symmetric key, which will be encrypted under the ABE scheme according to the AC policy. The AC policy will be specified as a smart contract that takes a user’s blockchain address and authority’s signature as input. There will be independent attribute authorities responsible for verifying different attributes and distributing the attribute keys. An attribute authority will form as a Ruby node to perform these duties.
When the node verifies that the user meets the predefined AC policy, the node client generates the attribute key, which will be delivered to the client’s SDK. The SDK decrypts the attribute key, with which it will decrypt the encrypted content. At the same time, the authority will generate a signature on the user’s blockchain address that will be accepted by the smart contract, which will serve as a record that the attribute authority has verified the user’s corresponding attribute.
Here’s a screenshot of it:
Q: What do you think is inhibiting the adoption of crypto tools to better manage data?
I think there are both macro and micro aspects we need to be aware of. Let’s start with macro and overall — crypto adoptions in general. With the current market situation where the myth about hedging inflation and recession with crypto currencies was shattered, it is harder to get adoption just because of the bear market itself and due to current sentiment. So, crypto in general has great potential, but the market itself is not ready to accept it.
If we go deeper into managing data itself, of course — adoption, education about how to manage it, and availability of products ready for use-cases. Also, it is not yet clear about the regulation aspect — we had a really bad experience with GDPR here in Europe.
So, in a nutshell, we have a web3/crypto market that is not that attractive to ordinary people. This means he will still use web2 or even web1 solutions to manage his data — he/she is not educated enough about the alternatives.
Q: Is it a global project or a local project? Which market are you currently focusing on, or are you focusing on building and growing to get customers, users and partners?
A: It is definitely a global project! We are a global team building global solutions as we strongly believe that privacy is everyone’s right fundamentally. Regarding the size and numbers we got 15 total + our ambassadors!
Q: What is the project’s safest competitor on the market today in terms of scalability, security, features, and adaptability?
We don’t have a direct competitor because of our underlying technology. Our main strength is the team and Functional Encryption itself — this is how we are different!
Q: The current market conditions create uncertainty and increase the level of vulnerability that scares investors, how can you mitigate it?
We actually believe it is good for the whole industry as it takes out the scam projects out of it while we can simply focus on building.
We have a legit team, legit runaway, proper treasury management so we strongly believe we can weather the storm!
Q: How do you rate the importance of the user community? Coming up, Do you have any special plans to attract and expand the community?
This is the most important thing when it comes to education and getting feedback on products and technology!
We have some open slots for new ambassadors — so if you have what it takes, please contact us!
About Us
Ruby Protocol is a cross-chain, privacy-first infrastructure, powered by Polkadot. Our layer-1 protocol utilizes Functional Encryption (FE) cryptography, which allows users to adopt a modular approach to data privacy and ownership. This novel solution will allow users to encrypt sensitive information on-chain, which can only be decrypted by holders of an approved private key.
Ruby’s FE Substrate-pallet will serve as the building blocks for privacy-first smart contract DApps building on the native Ruby Chain, while also acting as a privacy layer for Parachains and Web3 DApps across the Polkadot ecosystem.
