Notoros: Building a safer digital world
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Notoros is a startup in the first batch of Transform, a data science and AI accelerator, working to solve security issues with blockchain technology.
“We’re aiming for a world where we can better trust each other because we no longer rely on trust,” said Andrew Brick, co-founder and chief product officer of Notoros, a distributed ledger platform for the next generation of Zero Trust applications.
Zero Trust is a secure design philosophy that assumes everyone is an adversary and uses cryptography to eliminate the risk of interacting with them. The philosophy lays the foundation for a new type of internet, sometimes called “Web3”.
“Being trustworthy is a wonderful thing, but relying on trust is a vulnerability,” explained Brick. “To build one [digital] world that is secured from both bad actors of the human kind and new machines – deep counterfeiting and such problems – we need efficient, scalable blockchain technology.”
A like-minded partner
Brick, who studied electrical and computer engineering, and co-founder and CEO Brendan Laiben, an aerospace and mechanical engineer, met while working as contractors, building on a number of blockchains. Blockchains, which follow the Zero Trust philosophy, are distributed computer networks that allow decentralized, transparent and secure digital transactions.
The pair were annoyed by the limitations of existing blockchain technologies and wanted to find a better way to develop solutions for customers.
“Today’s blockchain technology is clumsy and difficult to use. To make matters worse, it regularly conflicts with the existing legal system, Brick said. “This means blockchain software dictates how you should behave instead of us dictating how the software should behave. That’s really the big shift we’re bringing – a compliant, easy-to-use platform.”
Combines the best in technology
Brick and Laiben’s Notoros platform combines concepts from mainframe computing, Internet communication protocols and cryptography to provide a robust, flexible and computationally efficient transaction format for distributed ledger networks.
Notoros allows public and private applications to operate side by side in the same ledger context without compromising security. The technology is generalized for all applications, giving solution architects the freedom to write interoperable applications in any programming language. This means companies can use Notoros with their existing technology stack.
The platform also provides a complete set of tools that developers can use to quickly develop Zero Trust applications with minimal operational costs.
“It’s the most versatile blockchain out there and makes it dramatically easier to onboard Zero Trust, the Web3 future, than the exorbitant complexity and cost of doing so now,” claims Brick.
A finished market
The potential applications of blockchain run the gamut from financial services to healthcare and supply chain management to energy trading. The Notoros founders are confident that their platform, currently operating as a beta, is destined to be the best solution for these industries and others.
“We know there is a market for this because we are our own customers,” Brick said. “We were the ones trying to build things on blockchains and deal with the frustration and the absurdity of the way blockchains work right now. So even as we were building it, we knew there would be demand.”
The company has piloted their platform with companies in the healthcare, defense and energy sectors, bringing Zero Trust applications to their businesses. Their latest project required the company to staff up from three to 11 full-time developers.
Last summer, Notoros graduated from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s accelerator program, creating a demonstration application to dramatically improve the agency’s ability to securely distribute and retrieve military intelligence.
The company has also conducted university outreach, giving lectures and workshops at Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University and Ohio State University, with an upcoming event at the University of Chicago in the works.
“It’s been a great time for us,” Brick said.
Now we’re talking business
The next step for Notoros, according to its founders, is to expand its reach and communicate its value to potential customers who may not be familiar with blockchain or Web3 technology.
“My co-founder and I are engineers, so we had to learn the hard way how to effectively communicate our vision to others and explain how to solve a problem in a new way,” Brick said. “When we started, we took a big problem that everyone was talking about and solved it. We thought people would be knocking down our door, but that’s just not how it works. In our case, we need to gauge where a person is in their knowledge of Web3 and tailor our communications to meet them where they are.”
The founders believe that The Polsky Center’s Transform accelerator will be a great place to hone their communication skills as well as build the relationships they need to unlock the potential of Web3 technology.
“The University of Chicago is an important institution at the intersection of many different industries and businesses,” Brick said. “We, too, want to be at that crossroads and help everyone work seamlessly together.
“We’re very excited about the Transform accelerator because it’s a great step toward the institutional buy-in we need to make this technology have the impact it’s intended to.”
Notoros is one of three startups selected for the first group of the Transform accelerator.
>> Applications for Cohort 2 of Transform will open on 17 April 2023.
