Oasis Labs: Privacy-First Blockchain Solutions

Oasis aims to enhance data protection by embedding privacy directly into smart contracts, offering an easy-to-use solution for existing applications across EVM-compatible networks. By championing "smart privacy," Oasis envisions a future where data usage is both secure and ethically responsible. The platform’s vision is to support a “responsible data society.”

History of Oasis Labs

Oasis Labs was founded in 2018 as one of the earliest technical contributors to the Oasis Network. The company was founded by Dr. Dawn Song, a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and a MacArthur Fellow.

In 2018, Oasis Labs raised $45 million from investors, including becoming the first-ever project to receive investment from the a16z crypto fund after it was established by parent firm Andreessen Horowitz. The Oasis platform launched on mainnet in 2020.

In 2020, the project announced a partnership with BMW to run experiments in privacy and data sharing. In 2022, Oasis Labs announced it was partnering with MetaAI on an application that would assess fairness in Meta’s products while protecting user privacy. The results of a survey on Instagram were shared with a third-party provider such that neither Meta nor the company facilitating the survey could see the individual responses.

In 2024, Oasis Labs launched Oasis PrivateSQL, a data analytics product focused on differential privacy for software applications using SQL databases, on Google Cloud Marketplace.

Features of Oasis Network

On-chain privacy is the primary feature of Oasis Network, overcoming the key challenge of all transaction data being publicly visible on-chain.

The project highlights use cases in AI, DeFi, gaming, identity, DAO management, and more. Oasis was also developed to overcome the challenges of legacy blockchain networks by offering increased scalability, higher security, and lower transaction fees.

The platform’s architecture differentiates it from its peers by separating its consensus and computing layers. The consensus layer is based on the proof of stake model for high throughput and is run by a decentralized network of 120 validator nodes.

The Oasis platform's compute layer, called the ParaTime layer, is designed to run multiple ParaTimes simultaneously. Think of ParaTimes as independent, yet interconnected, computing environments, each with its own shared memory. The architecture is somewhat comparable to the Relay chain and parachain structure of Polkadot, except that Oasis can support potentially limitless numbers of ParaTimes, offering greater flexibility and scalability.

The advantages of this design are twofold:

• Scalability: Transactions can be processed across multiple ParaTimes simultaneously, ensuring the network remains efficient even under heavy usage.
• Versatility: Developers have the freedom to create custom ParaTimes tailored to specific use cases, unlocking a world of potential for decentralized applications.

Notably, Sapphire and the Oasis Privacy Layer are specialized confidential ParaTimes, designed to empower developers with robust privacy features for their decentralized applications. This enables the creation of privacy-centric dapps that protect sensitive data while leveraging the benefits of blockchain technology.

Sapphire

Sapphire, a confidential EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) ParaTime, is the engine behind Oasis's signature feature: smart privacy. This unique approach allows for granular privacy control, so developers can make specific parts of their application confidential while leaving others public.

Any contract element wrapped with Sapphire is executed in a secure environment (TEE) with end-to-end encryption, ensuring complete privacy. Even stored data is encrypted, adding an extra layer of protection.

Since Sapphire is EVM-compatible, developers can easily bring their existing dapps to Oasis and add privacy features as needed, without any major code changes.

Oasis Privacy Layer

The Oasis Privacy Layer (OPL) is an interoperable bridge allowing developers to integrate Oasis's powerful privacy features directly into their smart contracts – regardless of the EVM-compatible network their application runs on.

Effectively, it allows dapp features that require privacy to run on Sapphire, using the OPL as a bridge, while users only need to interact with the main host network, and all assets remain on the original host chain.

Oasis and Privacy in AI

Over recent years, Oasis Labs and the Oasis platform have focused increasingly on the need for privacy protocols in artificial intelligence. Oasis Labs has previously established partnerships with enterprises such as BMW and Meta to support their advances in privacy technologies, while Oasis Protocol has also partnered with several projects in the blockchain sphere.

One example is a collaboration with Ocean Protocol on its crowd-based prediction tool, Predictoor. As an on-chain app, all predictions would typically be fully visible, but using Oasis Sapphire, the individual submissions are processed confidentially.

Oasis also partners with OraiChain, a Layer 1 protocol that enables developers to build using AI and ML integrations. The Oasis partnership ensures that AI computations take place confidentially, providing outputs in aggregate and protecting user privacy.

Oasis Labs essentials

• Oasis Labs is a company established to be a key contributor to the Oasis protocol, a decentralized Layer 1 blockchain focused on privacy.
• Oasis protocol enables developers to implement privacy features on-demand into their existing smart contracts and applications, an innovation it dubs “smart privacy.”
• These privacy-preserving technologies have been integrated by Meta Platforms, as well as Web3 projects such as Ocean Protocol and OraiChain.