For a web3 account, in addition to being able to manage its own digital assets, it must also have the ability to manage its own various data.
Cryptocurrency wallets (also known as digital wallets) are a typical example of applications that embody "users have full control over their personal data". Digital wallets can securely store users' public and private keys, allowing us to send, receive and manage our digital assets. It uses advanced encryption technology to protect private keys and prevent unauthorized access. With digital wallets, we have full control over our funds and can access them at any time and place as long as there is an Internet connection. This application, which does not require permission from others and will not be controlled by others, and is completely in our own hands, fully embodies the spirit of "users have full control over their personal data". After more than ten years of development, digital wallets have been increasingly recognized and accepted by people, and have promoted the development of web3.
However, digital wallets have obvious shortcomings so far. One of them is that they cannot save user data. The reason for not being able to save user data is that on-chain storage is very expensive, more than 10,000 times the price of ordinary storage; on the other hand, wallets only need to sign, not encrypt data. Some types of wallets do not even have private keys and cannot encrypt user data.
Each of us has a lot of data to save, and it will only increase. Some data is scattered on the servers of different service providers. Even if it is very important to us, we may not be able to get it back in our own hands; some data is stored in our mobile phones, computers at home, or mobile storage devices at home, which we can fully control; and some data has not yet been digitized, such as notebook records, or memories in the brain, etc. All of these data storage methods have certain security risks and inconveniences. What is remembered in the mind must not be too complicated, nor can it be required to be accurate. This is determined by the nature of human memory, so just remembering the password is enough to make us suffer; the data recorded in the notebook at home or on the digital storage device, in addition to being unable to be accessed at any time, there is also the risk of hardware damage or even loss; and the data stored on the service provider's server, although it can be accessed at any time, is actually shared with the service provider, and there is no privacy at all.
With the development of the digital economy, digital life occupies an increasingly higher proportion in our daily lives, and the value of personal data is also increasing (a typical example is digital wallets). We increasingly hope to have a way to ensure our control over the data, ensure the security of the data itself, and meet the requirements of anytime access. This is the original intention of our construction of the Mustard Seed Space product.
Like digital wallets, Mustard Seed Space also uses a pair of cryptographic asymmetric keys as the basis and core of the account. Whoever holds the private key is the owner of the account. However, Mustard Seed Space goes beyond digital wallets and provides users with more capabilities, one of which is that users can safely save private data. Through Mustard Seed Space, user data is automatically encrypted and then saved on the distributed storage system IPFS. No third party knows which CID files on IPFS belong to which account, let alone being able to decrypt them. Mathematically, rather than relying on the reputation or promise of a third party, let alone relying on human operations, to ensure the security of user data.
