The internet is fast evolving into something that many would have, few years ago called a dream. Some innovations existing today on the internet would not have been foreseen even as early as 10 years ago but what do we have today? A different story entirely. With a fast speed of transformation sweeping through the internet, innovations as recent as 3 years ago can already be tagged obsolete in this age. It is no more right to tag anything or idea impossible as nothing seems impossible no more in the face of technology.

Still on the journey of technology advancement, there is a new idea of building what I will call a smart internet.

“A new internet that is composed of smart data that remembers, keeps secret, learns from its users and is open for good.” - Covalent

What is Covalent.ai?

Covalent.ai is a new addition to the Internet protocol suite that specifies and enforces how data should be used. Under the Covalent protocol, data carries a "smart policy". Whereas a usual data usage policy is expressed in natural language and is only enforceable by law, a "smart policy" is specified in programming language and is enforceable by code.

What Problem is Covalent looking to solve?

The Internet is only as smart as the data it carries. Right now, data is mindless, easily exposed and abused. The existing Internet protocol suite provides end-to-end data communication specifying how data should be packetized, addressed, transmitted, routed, and received. However, the flaw in this is that the protocol failed to specify how data should be used after it has been received.

Thus, there is a need for a proper data usage control that can regulate what happens to data in the future after access is granted. The level of exposure and ideas that has existed, probably saw no need or thought it impossible to archive and this has made the problem to remain as a last frontier of the Internet protocol suite. But the covalent team is building a new and improved internet that will make us see things different from what we are used to.

What is their proposed plan to achieving this?

Simple! They are rolling out the 3 covalent musketeers (TEE. PSL and PEF) to war against the data usage policy abuse.

Meet the 3 Musketeers!

• Trusted Execution Environments (TEE)

With this, the plan is to first of all incentivize the creation of a network of TEE nodes which will provide a scalable amount of “trusted” computing power to permit the making of an important assumption about the program behavior of important “supervisor” programs. With this assumption, a much wider repertoire of tools for policy definition and enforcement becomes available to the upper layer.

• Policy Specification Language (PSL)

This is a new language (Centrifuge) equipped with code that helps enforce “smart policies” and translates human notions of data usage policy. As you may have known, the human notions of data usage policy is enforceable by law and are expressed in natural language, but the “smart policy” is specified in programming language and will be enforceable by code. COVA Centrifuge is the counterpart of Ethereum Solidity.

• Policy Enforcement Framework (PEF)

This works directly with the PSL. It is a frame work (CovaVM) that help enforces the policy written in Centrifuge. It is the counterpart of the Ethereum VM.



Likely job opportunity:

Although this was not directly state but reading between the lines of an article posted recently by the cova team here https://medium.com/@covatoken/introducing-cova-a-smart-policy-platform-bd6f5b5fd7a6 gives and idea that if you’re an engineer willing to work in blockchain there might be a slot for you here. The team posted and I quote

“COVA is laying the groundwork for an internet of Smart Data that remembers, keeps a secret, learns from its users, and is open for good. We need engineers who are daring enough to work on what others believe is impossible. We need a supportive community that accelerates the adoption of a new protocol.”

That was the closing lines of the article. It might actually mean nothing though but there is no harm in checking it out.

Well there you have it. To stay update with this project follow thom on there social media platforms below.

Follow COVA’s Official Telegram Group: https://t.me/covalentofficial

Follow COVA’s twitter: https://twitter.com/@covatoken

Follow COVA’s Medium: https://medium.com/@covatoken

Learn more about COVA on our website: https://covalent.ai

Read COVA’s white paper: https://github.com/covalent-hq/wiki/wiki