Unibright ONE — Enterprise-Grade Multichain- and Multi-Party-Synchronization under Zero Knowledge
Unibright presents Unibright ONE. Unibright ONE is the service-oriented synchronization platform that makes the baseline idea instantly usable for enterprises: Multichain- and multiparty synchronization under Zero Knowledge on Enterprise level.
Unibright: from Unibright Framework and Unibright Freequity over Baseledger to Unibright ONE.
Since our founding in 2017, we at Unibright have been pursuing our mission of blockchain-based business integration. We aim to help businesses leverage the technical advantages of blockchains to synchronize their IT systems with each other. We enable integrated, secured processes across system boundaries without the technical and regulatory complexity of the crypto environment standing in the way as an obstacle for businesses.
In addition to our own products, such as the Unibright Framework (our low-code environment for creating smart contracts without coding knowledge) and Unibright Freequity (our DeFi platform), Unibright has been one of the driving forces within the Baseline community in recent years. Together with companies like ConsenSys Mesh, Microsoft and EY, we have contributed our expertise and resources to define a common standard for enterprise process synchronization using blockchain technology. We have advanced this task to the point from which products and services must now be offered to implement these insights and make them usable for enterprise customers.
Baseledger, our enterprise blockchain solution was the first important step in this direction. In production since April 2022, Baseledger provides a simple, cost-effective, and regulatory-compliant way to securely and permanently store technical checksums/proofs of documents and processes on a decentralized network.
With Unibright ONE, Unibright now offers a service-oriented synchronization platform that makes the baseline idea immediately usable for enterprises: secure enterprise process synchronization on various blockchains, between multiple participants, optionally protected by zero- and limited knowledge technology.
Unibright ONE’s key features
Unibright ONE is designed as a web-based service application and offers among others:
- A service API for all microservices, callable from all ERP systems (SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, SalesForce, …) and legacy systems via REST services
- Workgroups with many participants for collaboration supported
- Baselining, notarization, workgroup management and notifications via service calls
- Notifications of new notarizations via pull (via REST), PUSH (via MQTT or NATS), email or retrieval via platform dashboard
- Usage of multiple blockchains (Baseledger, Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin) as notarization targets per call
- Pay-per-use with fiat gateway and/or UBT payment — no proprietary cryptocurrency holdings are required
- Optional securing of processes and involvement of third parties (such as auditors) through zero- and limited-knowledge technology (“SyncTree”)
- Finalizing and exiting of any number of single notarizations of one or more processes in arbitrary blockchains, where it is also explicitly possible to combine notarizations from different blockchains (e.g. Baseledger and Bitcoin) for an exit in another blockchain (e.g. Ethereum)
- Dashboard for configuration and administration
Functionality and use cases for Unibright ONE
Unibright ONE makes it possible to notarize the exchange of business objects (such as orders or invoices) between process participants. It is recorded on chain that all participants have reached an agreement that the correct content has been exchanged, i.e. sent, received and understood.
For this purpose, objects are converted into a “SyncTree”, a Merkle tree which, in addition to the attributes of the object as leaves, also calculates hashes at various levels and displays them to check the correctness of the data. Only the top node of the tree, the “root proof,” is stored in the blockchain. Consensus can then be established via these notarizations, meaning that each participant in a business process verifies (i.e., accepts or disagrees with) the exchanged SyncTrees.
A set of individual notarizations including the associated approvals or rejections within a workgroup can be transferred back into a SyncTree of a special kind (the “TrustMesh”) and notarized after the end of the process itself. Among other things, this enables individual steps of a process (e.g., order, delivery notification, receipt confirmation, and invoice) to be stored cheaply and quickly in a highly available blockchain such as Baseledger, but the consensus on the overall process to be recorded afterwards in a blockchain such as Ethereum that is as widely used as possible.
The stored data in the blockchain is meaningful only to the participants in the process, and does not in itself reveal anything about the nature or content of the process or even about the participating parties. It is the immutable and temporally unambiguous recorded evidence that the root of a particular SyncTree was recorded in a blockchain at a particular time.
Uninvolved third parties, such as auditors, can be provided with portions of the SyncTree under Limited or Zero-Knowledge, so that all intermediate evidence can be recalculated and verified without revealing the actual content of the original business object.
The concept of the SyncTree was introduced by Unibright as early as 2021 with the unveiling of the Baseledger Test Network, and is now being applied in a similar form in other cases, e.g., in the “Proof-Of-Reserve” as discussed and proposed right now by prominent figures such as Vitalik Buterin and crypto exchanges such as Binance. With Unibright ONE, it is straightforward to implement a “Proof-Of-Reserve” use case.
UBT, Unibright ONE, Baseledger and conUBC
Even during the launch of Baseledger, we at Unibright pointed out the importance of supporting infrastructure and service offerings around Baseledger.
Our partners at Concircle have already had a solution for connecting SAP systems in production for almost a year with the officially certified SAP connector “conUBC” (whose development builds on the 2018 Unibright Connector). The first version of conUBC already natively supports the connection to Baseledger. Through Unibright ONE, complete workflows within SAP can now be automated blockchain-notarized, and all without having to leave the technical boundaries of SAP, without having to write a single line of ABAP code.
Other major “pain points” for enterprises are and have been the technical and regulatory complexity of cryptocurrency custody and use, and the associated challenges for key management and cost control. With Unibright ONE, all of these difficulties can be abstracted away and a classic FIAT gateway can be used on a pay-per-transaction basis.
Although Unibright ONE is explicitly blockchain independent and offers multiple blockchain targets for notarization, in many cases using Baseledger is the best choice from a technical, regulatory, and cost perspective. Baseledger will continue to operate exclusively with UBT, the universal business token.
Also within Unibright ONE, the use of UBT offers clear advantages, as one UBT is currently (*as of Dec 21, 2022, subject to change) credited with transactions equivalent to 1 EUR.
UBT is and will remain the universal business token, and everyone at Unibright is dedicated to solidifying, expanding, and growing the ecosystem around UBT — like now with Unibright ONE!
Moving forward, the timeline for Unibright ONE
The development of Unibright ONE already started in parallel with the launch of the Baseledger test network. After initial pilot operations with pilot customers in Q2 2022, these customers will migrate their test operations to the production platform starting from January 2023.
Until the end of Q1 2023, Unibright ONE is expected to be opened to the general public, including documentation of all service endpoints and a “best-practice” cookbook for different use cases.
The integration of the Unibright Framework (for graphical configuration of workgroups and synchronization processes), as well as Unibright Freequity (for automatic tokenization of TrustMeshes, which e.g. stand for a certain invoice value) are subject of the further development of Unibright ONE.
About Unibright: Unibright is a team of blockchain specialists, architects, developers and consultants with 20+ years of experience in business processes and integration. Unibright offers consulting with Unibright Solutions, Enterprise-grade Multi-Party-Synchronization with Unibright ONE, low-code-integration tools with the Unibright Framework, programmable DeFi with Unibright Freequity, and the Universal Business Token UBT. Unibright is engaged in the Baseline Protocol, offers Baseledger as a solution to orchestrate and trust-enhance B2B processes and offers ERP-Blockchain-integration with Partners like concircle.
