Partisia Blockchain 2022 Year in Review

As the Partisia Blockchain team and our community end this year and look ahead to 2023, we want to take a minute to look back at everything we accomplished in the past 12 months. Suffice it to say, 2022 was a momentous year for us along a number of important fronts, from updating the network itself to working with partners on integrations and specific projects. Here are some of the highlights:

Network updates. As you know, the Partisia Blockchain Team is constantly building and our ecosystem is consistently progressing as we test the limits of nascent technologies. All the way we have been adding more functionality as teams are starting to use the platform. We couldn’t possibly fit all of our tech advances from the past year in a single message, but here are a few notable developments:

• Mainnet Launch and TGE — On May 31st, 2022 at 8:05 AM UTC, the genesis block deployment launched and our mainnet went live! After 4+ years of development, we welcomed a new era of Partisia Blockchain.
• Completion of “ZEUS” — On the heels of our Mainnet Launch, on July 4th, 2022, we released Version 3.0 of the Partisia Blockchain which included “ZEUS”. At the time, this development (alongside our mainnet launch) was our greatest milestone to date, as the release marked the first public release version of our Unified Public and Private Smart Contracts and included Zero Knowledge Nodes that make possible the uniquely scalable privacy-protecting functionality that sets us apart from other Web3 protocols.
• Decentralized KYB — In September, we instituted a fully decentralized KYB process for onboarding new node operators, vastly increasing our ability to grow the network.
• Community Staking — In November, we enabled vested holders of MPC tokens to delegate their tokens to node operators of their choosing, earning MPC token rewards as part of the utility of delegated staking.

Partners and Integrations. At Partisia Blockchain, we love tech, but we aren’t building cool technology for technology’s sake. Instead, we pride ourselves on building tools that will be used to solve real use cases for real people. So we were extremely pleased to begin work with a number of excellent partners in 2022. Here are a few examples:

• CyberPeace Institute — The CyberPeace Institute is a Geneva-based non-governmental organization (NGO) whose mission is to reduce the harm from cyberattacks on people’s lives worldwide. The CyberPeace Institute and Partisia Blockchain partnered to build a secure platform for private sharing of knowledge about cyber incidents to secure humanitarian sector organizations while protecting the sources of this key information.
• Polygon (USDC) — Polygon is a leading player in scaling Ethereum’s programmable infrastructure, aiming for greater cross-chain interoperability and offering developers a four-layered architecture. Polygon’s partnership with Partisia Blockchain adds a key platform to Polygon’s vast ecosystem, enabling data privacy and confidentiality that will accelerate adoption of blockchain-based solutions for mainstream use cases.
• ICRC Prototype — The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) currently provides humanitarian aid in over 90 countries around the world to those affected by armed conflict and violence. In partnership with the ICRC, Partisia Blockchain developed a prototype for a stablecoin utilizing our advanced multi-party computation technology to allow the ICRC to provide support to victims of armed conflict and violence that is both transparent and safe for recipients.
• Kin Search — Leveraging the power of the Partisia Blockchain network, Kin is using our privacy-protecting zero knowledge multi-party computations to build a next generation utility that will turn Web2 ad-tech on its head and allow internet users to participate in the data economy as full owners of their personal data.
• (RED) NFTs — (RED) was founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver in 2006 to bring companies together to fight the AIDS pandemic and recently has focused on combating the threat of COVID to the world’s most vulnerable communities, raising over $700 million for the Global Fund to date. This year, (RED) partnered with Partisia Blockchain and RED and some of the hottest artists in the NFT space for a special one-week-only NFT drop to raise funds to fight COVID-19 in Africa.
• Kucoin Labs — Since its inception, Kucoin has been an outstanding leader, helping builders achieve sustainable growth and success in the decentralized world. We partnered with KuCoin Labs on strategic token listing strategies after our TGE, including creating long term economic token modeling, ecosystem partnerships to bring valuable projects onto Partisia Blockchain, and Hackathon planning.
• Emurgo (Cardano) — Emurgo is the official commercial arm and a founding entity of the Cardano blockchain that was launched to support decentralized applications (dApp) and middleware solutions development on Cardano. Partisia Blockchain’s partnership with subsidiary Emurgo Ventures is allowing developers to incorporate Partisia blockchain’s privacy-preserving multi-party computations in their Cardano dApps.

Events. Events represent an essential channel for engaging with and broadening the Partisia Blockchain community. In addition to participating at major industry events, we also have begun an acceleration of our own events that will continue in the next year. Notable examples from 2022 included:

• First PBC Hackathon “PartiHack” — At our first-ever Partisia Blockchain sponsored developer event, we hosted more than 20 teams working on ideas for applications that would use our unique base layer as their technology foundation, culminating with live awards to the winning teams totaling $350K.
• TOKEN2049 — At one of the industry’s premiere annual events, Kurt Nielsen and Brian Gallagher introduced our developer program and our work with the ICRC.
• Benzinga — We attended Benzinga’s 8th Annual Fintech Deal Day & Global Fintech Awards, including our President and Co-founder Kurt Nielsen delivering a keynote address to a packed room of crypto-curious.
• Davos — Kurt Nielsen joined representatives from the CyberPeace Institute to talk about our joint work countering cyber threats.
• MPC Digital Asset Security Summit — As part of our work with the MPC Alliance, which Meta recently joined, our team presented on the use of MPC for token bridges and the interplay between the small and large oracles.
• Paris Blockchain Week — We were pleased to attend and have a chance to speak to participants from the stage at one of the leading crypto events of the year.
• Additional events where the Partisia Team offered support and educational content around Web3 scalability and privacy include Consensus 2022, Crypto Valley Conference 2022, Digital Tech Summit, snd University of Zurich and Geneva summer schools.

Others Talking about Partisia Blockchain. As we work to advance the technology and its adoption, it’s important that people learn about the groundbreaking work we are doing. In 2022, we had some solid media coverage and huge community support amplifying stories about us. 2023 will bring much more. In the meantime, a few examples from last year:

• The Block: Red Cross to reveal prototype for blockchain-based aid distribution project
• Crypto 101 Podcast: Trust Transparency and Privacy at the Speed of Light
• CryptoSlate: Has the trilemma been solved by new a Polygon-backed layer 1 blockchain?

2022 was an amazing year for Partisia Blockchain. 2023 promises many more technology advances, partnerships and events that we’ll be sharing with all of you in this community in the coming weeks and months. Until then, we wish you all a safe and happy year to come.

The Partisia Blockchain Team