Using Python to build a data privacy layer for decentralized applications

In this talk, we'll go through our project called NuCypher, a network to empower privacy and data confidentiality in decentralized systems based on the use of advanced cryptographic techniques. In particular, we use "proxy re-encryption", a special type of cryptosystem that allows to delegate decryption rights of encrypted information. Nodes in our network provide a cryptographically-enforced access control service that allows users to securely share information with others, but in such a way that nodes are completely oblivious to the data that is encrypted: at no point nodes can read anything.

We'll cover how Python has enabled the vast majority of our implementation, from constructing a low-level library for elliptic curve arithmetic on top of cryptography.io, to interacting with the Ethereum blockchain with py-geth and web3.py. Finally, you'll see a practical example of the use of pyUmbral, our cryptographic library (https://github.com/nucypher/pyUmbral), and a live demo of how to share data securely with the NuCypher network.