Amazon Adds Two Blockchain Patents, One for Distributed Storage Solution and Other for Cryptography
Global online retail giant Amazon is recently granted two blockchain-related patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). These two patents talks about the methods for improving distributed data storage as well as protecting the integrity of cryptographic digital signatures.
The patent title Signature Delegation was filed earlier this year in April 2018. This patent talks about a method of securing digital signatures by delegating the authority of digital signatures to subordinates in order to sign on behalf of the central authority. This delegation procedure resembles a “Merkle Tree” structure which is basically a binary data structure facilitating the efficient verification of huge chunks of data by leveraging the blockchain technology.
The patent explains a method in which “the signature authority provides a key-distribution service that distributes blocks of cryptographic keys to authorized signing delegates. An authorized signing delegate contacts the key-distribution service and requests a block of cryptographic keys.”
If in case, the cryptographic key is “marked as invalid,” after a “key revocation service queries the Merkle tree of delegable keys,” then the signature delegation service “provides the verifying entity with a revocation value associated with the revoked cryptographic key.” Amazon says that in such particular case, blockchain technology can be fruitful to implement the key revocation database.
The second patent tiled “Techniques for extending grids in data storage systems” was first filed three years back in 2015. The patents talks of different methods for creating extendable shards within a database. Sharding is a popular term used in the crypto industry which refers to the partitions with a database. These partitions divide large database into smaller and faster portions called ‘data shards’ that can be easily managed. This helps to create flexible databases as we have seen in the blockchain.
The patent filing notes that this method can serve to minimize the storage redundancy at the same time providing maximum durability, availability, and means of recovery. There are many tech startups working on this premise and tackling issues of managing complex databases using the distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Amazon, which is also well-known for its other technological pursuits, is exploring the blockchain and crypto space since a long time. Earlier in April 2018, Amazon Technologies bagged a patent for streaming of data marketplace wherein the users can receive real-time crypto transaction data.