The multinational corporation, Cisco plans to use blockchain technology to streamline the use of group messaging, but also to secure it more, according to the patent.

The US Patent and Trademark Office published the Cisco’s patent document on 29th March 2018. Through this patent, Cisco has referred to the benefits of blockchain technology, namely that it can provide the users with the most unique experience.

Cisco plans to solve the common problems

Cisco’s patent focuses on solving the “common problems” encountered in the daily messaging group. It refers to:

“how group membership is established, communicated, updated, and secured from unauthorized tampering … in the context of dynamic, decentralized, and self-organizing groups.”

Only authorized members will join the group chat

The document was called “GROUP MEMBERSHIP BLOCKCHAIN” and was submitted in December 2017. It offers alternatives and solutions to use personal cryptographic keys that should be owned by each person who takes part in a group, thus creating a peer-to-peer network. In another way, it’s desirable to design a decentralized group, formed only by authorized members.

The concept is simple. The first person to join the group will generate the first block then, more and more independent blocks will be generated through the devices of other members, thus creating a secure network.

Cisco wants the blocks to be used as an intermediary for registering new members. Thus, these will be able to eliminate former members at the entrance of other new ones.

A second version of the project says that blocks will support file sharing among group members in a safe and efficient way.

According to the patent:

“In summary, presented herein is a method for achieving authorization in confidential group communications in terms of an ordered list of data blocks representing a tamper-resistant chronological account of group membership updates … There are many applications of these techniques. One such application is enabling end-to-end encryption of instant messaging, content sharing, and streamed media. This is useful in developing a protocol or application designed to enable confidential group communications.”

An earlier patent submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office shows that Cisco focuses on new solutions and ways to use blockchain technology. In the patent published in October 2018, the Cisco giant referred to the introduction of digital technology in order to “to track the Internet of Things devices.”