Covalent (COVA) is partnering with BlueHill, the blockchain incubator and accelerator founded by IOST. Covalent’s focus on creating a private blockchain and data utilization infrastructure is a perfect fit for IOST’s blockchain platform, which is highly scalable, decentralized and secure.

Covalent is led by Vincent Li, Harvard Alumnus and Raymond Gao, Princeton Alumnus. The founders are experts in the field of AI and have been involved in the cryptocurrency community since 2014.

“COVA is excited to be working with Bluehill and IOST. The COVA protocol will add privacy and computational scalability to infrastructures like IOST. At the same time, scalable infrastructures like IOST will bring high TPS to the COVA protocol. It’s a perfect match.” ~ Vincent Li, Co-Founder of Covalent

BlueHill was created by IOST to meet the high demand from developers and entrepreneurs who want to create products on top of their blockchain network. It successfully raised $50 million in funding to launch this new initiative. Covalent is one of seven new partnerships that was recently announced by BlueHill.

The partnership between Covalent and BlueHill marks a new epoch in blockchain and data utilization research.

Covalent solves the data utilization problem

The Covalent protocol will create a trustless world database that allows researchers access to data which was previously unavailable, due to concerns over privacy. The objective of the Covalent protocol draws parallels from the TCP/IP protocol, which solved the data transfer problem and paved the way for the creation of the internet. Covalent’s goal is no less than to become the “Amazon for Data”.

The idea for Covalent began when the team recognized that only 1% of data was being utilized from a total of 22 ZB created in 2017. Based on this observation, the team set out to create a data utilization protocol that would bring together the world’s data into a shared network.

All data and models on the Covalent network are protected by military-grade security and privacy, which is provided by Trust Execution Environments (TEE). Covalent supports both High Throughput Computing (HTC) and Low-Latency Production (LLP).

Smart contracts written on the Covalent network can scale massively by using off-chain computation. Similarly, Covalent separates consensus from smart contract execution and allows for parallel execution, which means that the computational power of the Covalent network is the sum of all its nodes.

Medata will usher in a new era for medical researchers

Covalent has developed Medata, the first decentralized application (DApp) built on top of the Covalent protocol. Medata is a privacy-preserving medical data marketplace. The DApp promises a new gateway for medical data by providing researchers with easier access to large amounts of previously unused data, while still maintaining the privacy of patients.

Covalent has also created Covalent X, which it calls its “mad scientist division”. Covalent X uses Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHC) and zk-STARK technology to achieve a completely trustless setup for privacy computation. This marks the beginning of a new future in privacy-preserving computational networks.

By creating the “Amazon of Data”, the team will allow researchers to process vast amounts of data without the fear of breaching anyone’s privacy. Covalent has the team it needs to support its unique and groundbreaking vision. The full implication of this revolutionary new technology is yet to be seen, however, now that Covalent has the backing of BlueHIll and IOST, the team is one step closer to fulfilling its vision.