Data Architecture Laboratory Prospectus

Expanding Research Area from Blockchain to Data Architecture

Since establishing the SFC Institute Blockchain Lab in 2016, we have been exploring the use of blockchain technology as a basis for autonomous collaborative decentralized trust formation and trust information sharing.

On the other hand, in the past six years, various serious problems in cyberspaces have emerged at a swift pace. People from all walks of life have come to share a common understanding of the urgent need to address fake news, information aggregation through social networks, silos, and echo chambers that resonate information according to divergent opinions. It is no exaggeration to say that the current coronal disaster will continue for some time, and the problems are growing with no prospect of being resolved.

In April 2020, the year the Corona Disaster began, our laboratory published a discussion paper entitled “The State of Information Infrastructure Supporting Human Social Activities in the New Normal Era and the Positioning of Digital Identity”¹ as a direction to confront the above issues. Various feedback was received, and this document evolved into discussions at the “Trusted Web Promotion Council”², which aims to expand the trustworthy areas in cyberspace, and “White Paper Ver.1.0” was released in June 2021 and “White Paper Ver.2.0” ³, and the activities have expanded since then. Furthermore, in April 2022, we established the “Trusted Internet Architecture Lab(TIAL)”⁴ with the cooperation of Fujitsu and began to address issues related to false information. For human resource development, we started a class entitled “Introduction to Trusted Internet”⁵ in the fall semester of 2022 with the cooperation of Fujitsu alongside with TIAL. With the “Web Standards to Support Quality Media and Media Literacy of the General Public” project⁶ at the Center for Cyber Civilization Research (CCRC)⁷ in Keio University, we have started to work for “Originator Profile Technology”⁸ to promote the soundness of web articles and advertisements. We plan to start experimental operations in 2023. Some members of our laboratory lead the project.

These areas are oriented along different axes: public/private, global/international/domestic, and so on. How can each individual or legal entity conduct trustable communications privately, how can large trustable information providers such as newspapers deliver information, and how can each recipient of information distinguish and use the information provided by small information providers such as individuals? How can each recipient distinguish and use the information provided by a small information provider such as an individual? Keeping these differences in mind, we have been working to maximize the global nature of the Internet.

The following diagram illustrates our efforts to this point.

In all of these areas, digital identity technology will play an essential role as a core technology, as discussed in the discussion paper. On the other hand, while there is an intense longing for decentralized and self-sovereign identity technologies, people must use a common trustworthy intermediary approach when they access cyberspace. In other words, using the Internet requires bootstrapping trust from a centralized trust-originating entity. Therefore, only by taking cues from existing technologies can there be a realistic solution for decentralized systems. The discussions in the Trusted Web Promotion Council embody just such a method. The activities in the Trusted Web will lead to the realization of “Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT)”⁹ proposed by Japan at the Davos Forum and the G20 Osaka Summit in 2019.

Initially leaning toward a bias stimulated by blockchain technology, including W3C standards such as Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials, which we use as tools in these activities, there has been a shift toward broader usage. Our members have actively contributed to these two standards as members of W3C working groups. We have also proposed extensions, such as multilingual support in Verifiable Credentials, and the discussions are underway. Our stance on blockchain technology has been to evaluate it seriously and use it appropriately, so a shift to a form that is not concerned only with blockchain is consistent with our Lab’s objective at its establishment. Reflecting on the discussion thus far, we are not stuck with blockchain, but rather, with blockchain in mind^{10 11 12}, while being aware of the organization of relationships among data, code, operations, governance, and the communities that share them. The target area should be a secure data model that applies cryptography and focuses on governance design.

Therefore, we have decided to revise the direction of the lab to focus on “data architecture,” the current research methodology that combines decentralized-oriented technologies to expand the confirmability of data, rather than narrowly focusing on the blockchain as a target area. We will be renaming the lab and expanding our research under this concept.

Therefore, we have renamed the “Blockchain Lab.” to “Data Architecture Lab.” The official name change will be finalized upon campus approval in mid-November 2022.

One of our new and long-term missions will be to discover and propose data architectures at a higher level of abstraction, as described in the Trusted Web Promotion Council’s white paper. For example, rather than relying on specific technologies, one of our primary tasks will be to organize the way data circulates on the Internet from a data architecture perspective, and sublimate it into a generalized design, so to speak, as a “protocol pattern.” The following is a recapitulation of the founding objectives of the Blockchain Lab in 2016.

Blockchain technology, which is the platform for sharing reliable information and building distributed trust autonomously, continues to widespread through the virtual currency “Bitcoin.” Blockchain technology has the characteristic of establishing a decentralized distribution network by making use of P2P technology and public key cryptography on the Internet. As a distributed ledger that provides assurance of no falsification, the blockchain technology is applicable other than virtual currency.

From the standpoint of academia, the research of applications not bounded by virtual currency is a matter of considerable urgency. To realize this endeavor, we need to pursue research on 1) verify blockchain technology’s safety & stability and develop related software, 2) construct verification foundations with development in various application fields, and 3) build a research network among global academia.

Due to the above reasons, the Blockchain Laboratory established in SFC, and it will organize an academic network primarily with universities such as theUniversity of Tokyo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.) to conduct the research activities listed above.