Research challenges for the Fujitsu team working on the advanced Web3 Acceleration Platform (Part 1)

Takayoshi: The development of Web3 has the potential to transform not only the structure of an organization but also the working method such as DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) (*4). In addition, social issues have become increasingly complex in recent years, and many of them cannot be solved by a single organization or group. For example, realizing carbon neutrality requires a system for sharing and verifying data on carbon footprints and carbon credits on a global scale across countries and industries. In such use cases, an autonomous decentralized mechanism that allows many stakeholders to cooperate with each other is the only truly effective option. Web3 technologies support such an autonomous decentralized mechanism and contribute to solving these important social issues. We provide a variety of services and technologies on the Web3 Acceleration Platform, aiming to create a Web3 world where individuals and businesses can connect with each other in an autonomous, decentralized, and secure manner in the digital space and create value.

Takayoshi: To realize the Web3 world, the main challenge lies in how to ensure the trustworthiness of secure data sharing in the digital space, as well as the authenticity of the data itself. Two specific examples of these challenges in exchanging data between organizations and individuals are trust in data sharing and trust in the data itself. We have developed a variety of technologies to ensure that data distribution trust is achieved in order to make Web3 a reality. Through the Web3 Acceleration Platform, we provide APIs that enable the use of core technologies and a testbed for developing various applications. We will also share our know-how such as the application of technology using those APIs. Our approach is to make the technology widely available and provide users with the opportunities to use them in this way. By doing so, we hope to accelerate the social implementation of Web3 technology and encourage the creation of new businesses together with our partners.

ConnectionChain is one of the technologies designed for the Web3 Acceleration Platform. This technology enables the connection of multiple blockchains, linking various digital asset exchange transactions, as well as securely automating and recording the entire process as a single transaction. This technology also allows intermediaries that operate services using ConnectionChain to control data sharing to realize a trust in the Web3 society.

Yuki Hasegawa: Since ConnectionChain is a consortium-type blockchain with multiple administrators mediating the federated process, it can achieve secure automated execution and tracing while applying governance control to the federated process. Specifically, the system is equipped with mechanisms to control the content and authorization of shared data, rollback processing in the event of processing failure and record the progress of processing in a ledger. To make this technology available to everyone, we are actively engaged as core members of the Hyperledger Cacti Project (*5), which involves open-sourcing connectors that can seamlessly connect to a wide variety of blockchain platforms. Our company has been selected by Forbes as one of the Forbes Blockchain 50 (*6) in 2022 and again in 2023, demonstrating our strong presence in this field.

Yuki Yonekura: Recently we conducted a proof-of-concept using ConnectionChain at a major tourism event called Kanazawa Tsukimi Kouro 2023 (*7). During the event, we issued NFT (*8) in conjunction with an AR application exhibited at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology and about 100 people participated in the exhibition. In this proof-of-concept, ConnectionChain was used in conjunction with Ethereum (*9) as a function to issue NFT. Kanazawa city officials and representatives from local newspapers and broadcasters expressed interest in our technology. They commented that while there are many services and examples of issuing NFT, it was a unique experience to be able manually to create a NFT from an image generated on the spot, using an AR application. Event participants found it interesting and we received positive feedback. It demonstrates the importance of providing seamless new experiences, without the technology being obvious.

Takayoshi: As Yuki Yonekura explained, in addition to creating new experiences, another important value aspect is to provide technology on the Web3 Acceleration Platform that enables students with no development experience to build applications easily.

Yuki Yonekura: In addition to the collaboration with Kanazawa Institute of Technology, we are conducting joint research with JTB Corp. on a tourism DX service for wealthy foreign visitors to Japan (*10). This joint research incorporates technology proposals from our research laboratory. For a number of years now, we have been repeatedly investigating case studies and collecting various token economy use cases, using virtual currency and blockchain technology. Based on this accumulated knowledge, we are currently considering how to create a new generation of exciting new experiences.

Trustable Internet makes it easy to check the authenticity of content on the web, such as social networking posts that include content of uncertain authenticity, by providing information to verify the authenticity. The technology aims to improve the quality of content on the web by preventing content viewers from being misled by false information.

Yoshitomo: The feature of this technology is to show evidence provided by entities other than the originator of the content on the Web, in a form that does not depend on a specific service. This allows third parties to correct false information, even if the originator of the information is delivering false information. In addition, while some technologies responding to fake news by detecting the images in AI-generated articles, our proposed technology has the advantage of being able to make multimodal judgments that integrate the results of AI judgments on images and text. To date, we have made a number of presentations and exhibited demonstrations of Trustable Internet at international standardization conferences, with the result that we have started to gain recognition from engineers and researchers both in domestic and overseas markets.

Yoshitomo: The main use case of Trustable Internet is to prevent disinformation on the web. In the future, we plan to demonstrate the usefulness of Trustable Internet for disinformation to a wide cross-section of potential users, including fact-checking organizations, government agencies and companies that are deeply interested in countermeasures against disinformation. Some companies in the publishing and broadcasting industries conduct fact-checking to determine whether news is disinformation or fact. We believe that we can propose the use of our technology to these domestic and foreign companies.

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Research challenges for the Fujitsu team working on the advanced Web3 Acceleration Platform (Part 2)