About the Keep Network

What is the Keep Network?

Blockchain's public status is limiting in cases where some information needs to stay confidential. Decentralized applications (dApps) need access to private data without exposing it to the public blockchain.

The Keep Solution

The Keep network features off-chain containers for private data called "keeps" that give smart contracts deep interactivity with private data without compromising transparency or auditability.

  • Fully Decentralized. Keep is the only protocol that is truly decentralized. It’s completely trustless and permissionless because multiple stakers are contributing to operate an incentivized network.

  • Private. Data is stored using the highest level of encryption.

  • Scalable. Keep’s throughput is only constrained by the blockchain it’s connected with. There are no other limits to its speed.

  • Interoperable. Keep supports easy interoperation between Bitcoin, Ethererum, and any other L1 blockchains.

  • Audited. Keep has been fully audited for security and a safe user experience.

Keep in Action: tBTC

Keep is the network that enables tBTC, the safe way for BTC holders to earn on Ethereum. tBTC is the open-source and permissionless bridge connecting Bitcoin to Ethereum and other chains.

Bitcoin holders are increasingly taking advantage of opportunities to earn with their BTC on other chains such as Ethereum. The bridge that connects them to those chains must be in line with Bitcoin values, namely, being permissionless and censorship resistant. The existing solutions to tokenized bitcoin are centralized and involve intermediaries.

Keep technology is what sets tBTC apart as the only decentralized solution for Bitcoin on Ethereum. Learn more about tBTC on the tBTC website ↗

What is a keep?

A keep is an off-chain container for private data. It contains up to 1MB of encrypted storage that is distributed across one or more keep providers, or members. A keep provider is one economic entity in the Keep Network; they have a stake and must participate in a signing group as a single member.

Keeps allow contracts to manage and use private data without exposing the data to the public blockchain. The keep network is the incentivized network that encompasses all of the keeps.

The Keep Network's native token is KEEP. It powers the network and undergirds all the apps that are and will be built on it.

Learn more about KEEP tokens and how to get them:

pageHow to get KEEP

The Keep Network requires a trusted source of randomness for the process of trustless and random group selection. This trusted source of randomness takes the form of a BLS Threshold Relay, otherwise known as the Random Beacon.

What is the Random Beacon?

The Random Beacon is a way of generating verifiable randomness that is resistant to bad actors both in the relay network and on the anchoring blockchain, assumed here to be Ethereum. It is used to determine member selection for keeps.

No one knows who the keep signers will be – including the signers themselves – until the moment they are selected by the Random Beacon. This ensures that signers are not able to collude to steal funds or attack the network, and it’s why the true randomness supplied by the beacon is so important.

A key way tBTC, the first application built on the Keep Network, ensures trustlessness is by addressing counterparty risk. It uses a system of signers’ groups that allows tBTC to process transactions without a trusted middleman. Signer selection is therefore essential to tBTC’s proper functioning and the creation of ECDSA Keeps.

Read more about the Random Beacon in the technical documentation.

What are ECDSA Keeps and tBTC?

tBTC is the open-source and permissionless bridge connecting Bitcoin to Ethereum and other chains. Learn more on the tBTC website ↗

Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) keeps are the underlying technology of tBTC, a decentralized application built on the Keep Network. tBTC allows you to deposit and redeem BTC in DeFi without intermediaries.

Implemented with secure multi-party computation (sMPC), ECDSA keeps make it possible for contracts to communicate cross-chain by signing transactions between chains with a number of geographically distributed threshold signers. ECDSA keeps secure the transactions with multiple individual key shares, held independently by multiple signers.

Decentralized signing is performed with sMPC for computation on private key shares without revealing them. Responsibility for signatures is divided, requiring a threshold number of participants to create a signature using their key shares.

Read more about ECDSA Keeps and tBTC in the technical documentation.

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