Federated Chains

Federated Chains: A Federated chain is a collaborative network infrastructure where multiple enterprises connect their data centres to share. Despite the data from different enterprises being stored on the same federated chain, privacy-preserving controls ensure this data remains inaccessible to other enterprises.

One of the critical features of the federated chain in NetX is its verifiable openness. This feature enables new nodes to join and leave the federated chain freely once predefined rules are met automatically. NetX achieves this property through its integrity verification protocols. When setting up a federated chain, the initiating organisations can define the properties nodes must meet to join the federation. These properties include the integrity fingerprints of the entire software stack of the applying nodes, their critical configurations, and necessary certificates. If a node satisfies these criteria, it is allowed to join the federation automatically.

Another critical feature of NetX's federated chain is its ability to be configured as a hierarchical structure. An entire federated chain can become a node within another federated chain. At the leaf node of the hierarchy, each enterprise connects its private chain to the federated chain it joins. This hierarchical structure allows enterprise data and applications to be organised according to industry-specific needs and regulatory requirements. It also enables the federated chain to scale to an Internet-scale deployment while achieving effective data compartmentalisation and cooperation. This setting is especially beneficial in countries with strong regulations against the cryptocurrency industry, meeting the needs of Web 3.0.

To facilitate data access and processing across multiple enterprises within the federated blockchain, two additional components are introduced:

• Middle Layer Data Access Contract: This contract acts as an intermediary layer communicating with the Data Process Contracts from enterprises participating in the federated blockchain. Its role is to provide combined access capabilities to the entire dataset or specific portions of the data stored on the federated blockchain. By interacting with this middle-layer contract, enterprises can access the data they need based on predefined agreements, even if it is sourced from multiple providers. This helps streamline data access and ensures that access policies are consistently enforced.

• Middle Layer Data Process Contract: This contract communicates with the Data Access Contracts from enterprises within the federated blockchain. Its primary function is to act as a unified data processing procedure that can work on the entire dataset or specific segments of the data on the federated blockchain. Enterprises can leverage this contract to apply standardised data processing operations to the data, enabling more efficient data utilisation and integration.