Explaining the DeBio Architecture in Plain English
A deep dive into each layer of the DeBio Network architecture
The current biomedical system is broken.
The status quo prevents patients from being able to access their data freely, and healthcare providers can’t guarantee the safety of their patient’s data.
The DeBio Network aims to change that. We aim to revolutionize the current biomedical industry by giving patients full sovereignty over their data using the most cutting-edge blockchain technologies.
The introduction of blockchain in the current tech ecosystem plays a big role in the pursuit of decentralized global finance, but the use cases offered by blockchain exceed more than just finance. We believe that the future of medical data relies partly on the use of blockchain, especially in the specialization of technology use cases as well as interoperability.
The DeBio Techstack
Bioinformatics and biomedical ecosystems both have unique demands in how they both need to be accessible to the professionals conducting the studies but also be secure enough to safeguard the patient’s privacy and sovereignty. Thus, to guarantee patient sovereignty over their data, our entire tech stack consists of decentralized solutions ranging from decentralized authentication to decentralized file storage. We have incorporated a slew of cutting-edge technologies in our solution, including but not limited to:
Substrate
The first notable tech we incorporated is Substrate. Substrate is the framework behind the Polkadot token, enabling developers to build purposeful blockchains. We build our core services using Substrate, making them the core building blocks of our solution. We chose Substrate because of the two following reasons:
- Blockchain interoperability (essentially being able to communicate between different blockchains).
- Relay chain security (applying stricter security standards of the host relay chain).
Other than allowing blockchains to communicate with each other, the interoperability feature also enforces a security standard that will be inherited by each parachain connected to the main relay chain. As a result, the security of our distributed ledger is improved by following the standards of the corresponding relay chain.
KILT Protocol
The next notable mention would be the KILT Protocol. KILT is a protocol for creating, attesting, and verifying identities anonymously on Web3. To authenticate themselves, each user needs to create a claim, that would then be sent to a trusted attester.
An attester has the responsibility of certifying a user’s claim, which will then transform into a hash to be saved on the KILT blockchain. A user’s claim sometimes contains sensitive data concerning the user, but because the hash cannot be transformed back into a user claim the user’s privacy is guaranteed.
After receiving the certificate from the trusted attester, the user can now use his/her claims on applications that use KILT and trusts the aforementioned attester. KILT is privacy by design. Applications that will verify the claim do not need to go through the attester and will directly compare the claim to the one stored in the KILT blockchain, cutting the attester of from the verification process and making it fully decentralized.
The KILT Protocol provides a solution that prevents data from being concentrated in one entity. It enables data sovereignty for the privacy-conscious. We have partnered with KILT to implement our decentralized authentication system because it fits perfectly with DeBio’s anonymous-first use case.
The Octopus Network
Octopus is a cryptonetwork for launching and running Web3 application-specific blockchains at the fraction of the cost. One of the considerations of using Octopus is that, compared to Polkadot, they offer a significantly cheaper security lease and comparable cross-chain capabilities. Octopus is backed by the NEAR Protocol, NEAR is a high-performance blockchain meant to solve the problem of scalability, and to increase developer productivity by simplifying the development process and creating a developer-friendly environment.
DeBio is already partnered with Octopus and will be one of the first five application-specific blockchains (appchains) launched on the Octopus Network. We are also already part of the Octopus Guild, a community of developers and app chains on the Octopus Network.
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol made for fully decentralized, peer-to-peer data sharing and storage. IPFS was created as a solution for decentralized projects that want to store an amount of data that is too large to be stored in the blockchain itself. IPFS creates unique content addresses by hashing the content itself. Each unique content will have a different address pointing to its location. DeBio implements IPFS into our solution to store biomedical data such as encrypted human genomes and encrypted electronic medical records.
Ocean Protocol
The Ocean Protocol is built for the consumption of data assets in a secure, privacy-preserving fashion. It does this with the compute-to-data feature and enables the monetization of data without it ever having to leave the owner’s premises. The Ocean Protocol’s open-source data marketplace called the Ocean Market is forkable; the DeBio Network team will use Ocean for our biomedical data staking solution.
Privacy Computing
To stake biomedical data, DeBio will host anonymous biomedical data in our private data store. This process doesn’t involve the aforementioned IPFS because the data store will be completely separate from IPFS. Users who want to stake their data will need to decrypt and upload their biomedical data to our privately-held data store. While transferring decrypted biomedical data to a privately-held data store sounds eerie, DeBio will implement privacy computing concepts within our data store to safeguard your privacy.
Only after the user’s consent are the datasets aggregated through Ocean’s compute-to-data proxy, and the 3rd party will be able to create analytics and process the data all the while it remains on-premises.
By incentivizing users to stake their genomic/biomedical data, we hope that it would further incentivize research in the field. Pandu Sastrowardoyo, the CEO of DeBio, stated that one of the reasons she created DeBio is to help genetic research flourish by creating a fully anonymous genetic data marketplace. “DeBio is a whole new economic system for genomics — allowing genetic sovereignty, ensuring participation of smaller labs while supercharging genetic research. All done on top of a DeFi-like model that is fully decentralized,” said Pandu.
Technical Architecture Layers
Our technical architecture consists of four layers, the main blockchain infrastructure, the transport and generic business logic layer, and lastly the top-level business logic layer.
Layer 1: The Blockchain Infrastructure
The first layer will contain our core services. The core services are built on top of Substrate, Octopus, and IPFS. Substrate is the core building block for the blockchain service. To save large files we will use IPFS and save the content address inside Substrate instead. Finally, the entire app chain will be connected with the Octopus relay chain.
Layer 2 & 3: The Transport and Generic Business Logic Layer
The second and third layer contain our transport and generic business logic. These layers are responsible for serving data directly to the users. Each pallet contains the base business logic for interactions with our blockchain, and will serve as an abstraction layer from the fourth layer to communicate with Substrate services on the first layer.
Layer 4: The Top-Level Business Logic Layer
The fourth layer would consist of the DeBio UI and Metamask. All interaction between the users and the blockchain will be done from the fourth layer. All queries will also be defined from the top level, and will then be processed on all the previously mentioned layers. To fund each transaction, users can use Metamask to pay using an ERC20 stable coin. In this case, DeBio will be using DAI as our stable coin of choice.
The future is here, DeBio is creating solutions to revolutionize the healthcare and genetic testing industry. Are you ready to change the world with us?
