SBIR Phase II: A Provable Data Lineage System for Scaling the Data-Sharing Economy

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是通过扩大数据共享经济来提高消费产品和服务的质量。数据共享和重用增加了收入来源，使公司能够在改进产品和服务方面实现8- 15倍的投资回报。尽管有这些好处，但数据共享的增长受到阻碍，因为大约60%的公司无法访问所需的数据，只有大约30%的公司已经采取了数据共享的第一步，以实现其潜在的回报。广泛共享的主要挑战是“混乱”的数据以及围绕所有权和使用的法律的问题。一些组织已经在内部通过“特征存储”解决了这些挑战，这些特征存储支持提取见解的数据处理管道。虽然当前一代的功能存储对于单个组织工作得很好，但它们的集中式设计假定了跨多个组织缺乏的信任级别。 这项工作将开发一个支持跨组织工作流所需的信任要求的功能存储，以实现数据共享的重大回报。SBIR第二阶段项目提出通过解决两个主要技术挑战来实现分散式功能存储（DeFS）。首先，DeFS需要快速、可靠和可证明正确的数据存储。虽然第一层区块链存储被证明是正确的，但如果矿工放弃它，它将无法提供所需的写入速度和长期可用性。该项目提出的方法将通过在虚拟区块链上签署数据来满足可靠性要求，该虚拟区块链可以在第一层区块链之间跨越和迁移。虚拟区块链的连续性使其能够在第一层链失败时生存，并随着新链的上线而改进。 此外，虚拟区块链通过在私有区块链上快速创建虚拟区块并定期迁移到第一层来满足速度要求。其次，DeFS需要集成多个数据源和管道代码，而不会泄漏。虽然交互式证明技术满足了隐私，但它们不能扩展到大型数据集。该项目将通过开发可扩展和安全的计算框架来支持数据处理管道，例如数据处理和模型拟合。该框架保护了在虚拟化可信执行环境中评估的数据和管道代码的隐私，并由围绕虚拟区块链承诺计划构建的无信任分布式协议控制。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) is to increase the quality of consumer products and services by scaling the data sharing economy. Data sharing and reuse increases revenue streams and allows companies to realize a 8-15x return on investment in improved products and services. Despite these benefits, growth in data sharing is stymied because approximately 60% of companies are unable to access needed data, and only about 30% have taken first steps towards data sharing to realize its potential returns. The major challenges of widespread sharing are “messy" data and the legal issues surrounding ownership and utilization. Some organizations have addressed these challenges internally with “feature stores,” which support data processing pipelines that extract insights. While the current generation of feature stores works well for a single organization, their centralized design assumes a level of trust absent across multiple organizations. This proposed work will develop a feature store that supports the trust requirements needed for inter-organizational workflows to enable realizing the significant returns from data sharing.This SBIR Phase II project proposes to implement a decentralized feature store (DeFS) by solving two primary technical challenges. First, a DeFS requires fast, reliable, and provably correct data storage. While layer-1 blockchain storage is provably correct, it does not provide the required write speed nor long-term availability if miners abandon it. This project's proposed approach will meet the reliability requirement by signing data on a virtual blockchain that can span and migrate between layer-1 blockchains. The continuity of the virtual blockchain allows it to survive as layer-1 chains fail and improve as new chains come online. Moreover, the virtual blockchain meets speed requirements by creating virtual blocks quickly on a private blockchain and periodically migrating to layer-1. Second, a DeFS requires integrating multiple data sources and pipeline code without leaking either. While interactive proof techniques satisfy privacy, they do not scale to large data sets. This project will support data processing pipelines, such as data wrangling and model fitting, by developing a scalable and secure computing framework. The framework preserves the privacy of both data and pipeline code evaluated on virtualized trusted execution environments and controlled by a trustless distributed protocol built around a virtual blockchain commitment scheme.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.