Gu Jianliang — VeChain Chief Technology Officer

VeChain’s Chief Technology Officer Gu Jianliang is the first to take the stage after the one hour lunch break.

Who is Gu Jianliang?

Before talking about his presentation, I feel it’s very important to highlight some of Gu Jianliang’s credentials.

Before joining VeChain as the Chief Technology Operator, he previously worked as the Technology Director within TCL & ALCATEL Mobile Communication Co., Ltd. (a multinational electronics company) and has accumulated over 18 years of experience in relevant industries, such as mobile telecommunication and IoT.

Notably, during his career at TCL & ALCATEL, Gu led the technical team at TCL & ALCATEL to design various mobile communication devices for T-mobile, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, etc. He also redefined many hardware design standard, including baseband, audio, multimedia, etc. In addition, he established the design principle of basic software functionality, including power management, security design, etc.

Apart from his rich experience in relevant industries, Gu also holds, invented and helped to invent more than 100 relevant patents in varying fields, such as integrated circuit design, mobile device power management, enhanced traceability by utilizing NFC technology, etc.

Now back to Gu Jianliang’s Summit presentation…

Turnkey Solution

VeChain’s turnkey solutions are both hardware and software. ToolChain (mentioned earlier) is an example of this. He discusses the benefits of using turnkey solutions in both small business and enterprise use.

Gu Jianliang describes the benefits of using a turnkey solution

Enterprise Asset Management

VeChain has designed two solutions for Enterprise Asset Management. HSM Based Key Escrow and the Threshold Signature Solution. The breakdown of each is below.

HSM Based Key Escrow

A dedicated crypto processor that is specifically designed for crypto key lifecycle management. The highest level of VeChain’s HSM private key management which is available as a turnkey solution and includes FIPs 140–2 level 3 security level which includes VeChain’s firmware. VeChain has also designed a Management Portal to help manage permissions and risk control.

This whole solution is for key escrow so it can be used in fintech and trust companies. Gu presents a real life use case currently being used within the digital carbon ecosystem. The user drives their EVM (electric car) which in return earns them the Carbon Credit (CVCT) token, this solution helps to escrow the private key for the user.

Gu Jianliang describes how the digital carbon ecosystem is using VeChain’s escrow solutions

Threshold Signature Solution

An off-line solution which breaks down the private key into several pieces to help manage your own assets of a company. This solution used with multiple ‘Secret Shares’, breaking down the private key, the private key can be recovered with a minimum amount of secret shares to recover the private key and the TX can be signed.

Compared to an on-chain option, such as a multi-signature smart contract, the Threshold Signature Solution is much more secure. The VeChain Foundation’s digital assets are managed by this solution.

VeChain has designed an asymmetric cryptography algorithm to help encrypt the data with the communicator, so even if the data is transmitted in the public network, the secret share and private key can not be comprimised. VeChain has also designed a remote web based application so that each of the secret shares do not have to be online, in the same place, at the same time.

VeKey Solution — Second Generation

Gu introduces VeKey, now in its second generation, VeKey is VeChain’s enterprise ready secure hardware wallet.

The second generation VeKey adds two major improvements. Firstly, fingerprint + password protection are added. Secondly, VeKey now uses a Microcontroller Unit (MCU) + Secure Element (SE) two in one design. Compared to other market leading hardware wallets which have seperate MCU and SE chips, the two in one design used in VeKey is much more secure.

Gu Jianliang showcases VeChain’s second generation VeKey hardware wallet solution

Before using remote service for VeKey, the remote service must be authenticated before signing any transactions. The remote service sends an certified authentifier and signature to the VeKey, then after authenticated, the VeKey can sign the transaction. Very useful, especially in real business scenarios.

VeKey — Open to the Community

VeChain has now opened VeKey to the community, with native APIs for building native applications for both Windows and Mac OS. VeChain has also developed Restful APIs that can run on both Windows and Mac OS so you can authorize web applications to access VeKey through USB and sign transactions.

The second generation VeKey

Anyone that is interested in one of these turnkey solutions should visit the new VeChainWorld site.