Silex Insight and Medium Inc. accelerate towards 1 million ECDSA signature verifications per second on a blockchain

October 8, 2019 -- Silex Insight, a leading provider of security IP cores, and Medium Inc., a Korean leading provider of blockchain and enterprise security solutions, have joined forces to deliver a blockchain platform with extreme high performance that can securely process more than 1 million signature verifications per second!

Medium Inc.’s high performance blockchain platform is made possible through Silex Insight’s hardware acceleration platform that uses public key cryptography engines to offload Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) cryptographic operations for secp256k1 (used in Bitcoin) using Xilinx Ultrascale+ enabled PCIe cards. The idea was to have a scalable plug and play solution for both private and public clouds wherever needed.

Generally, blockchain platforms make use of DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) for secure and transparent transactions. However, due to their resource-intensive and decentralized nature, there are significant challenges in terms of scalability for real-world applications.

Medium Inc. wanted to bridge this gap with cutting-edge technology delivered via a single blockchain platform that uses hardware acceleration capable of providing public, permissioned, and private blockchains along with a decentralized exchange. Therefore, Medium Inc. took a strategic decision to team up with Silex Insight, in order to reach their goal of being able to process smart contracts and more than 1 million signature verifications per second.

“Silex Insight is an ideal partner with a rich history within embedded security and a proven technology for massive public key operations”, says TG Han, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Medium Inc. and he continues; “As a matter of fact, scalability is no longer a bottleneck and we are now capable of massive adaptation and tremendous throughput, without compromising security.”

“Blockchain transactions have the potential to revolutionize the world economy, and we are excited to deliver security solutions according to the market needs. With Medium Inc. it was not about connecting the cryptographic standard to their blockchain requirement, it was about setting a new performance benchmark on minimum power consumption. With the same setup as Medium Inc. using the NIST curve (sepc256r1) instead, it is possible to further increase the ECDSA signature verifications to 2 million per second” says Pieter Willems, Director Sales and Marketing Security Products at Silex Insight.

Silex Insight and Medium Inc. are consolidating their partnership and are looking to build future solutions to continually boost performance and further reducing power consumption.

About Silex Insight

Silex Insight is a recognized market-leading independent supplier of security IP solutions for embedded systems. The security platforms and solutions from Silex Insight include flexible and high-performance crypto-engines which are easy to integrate and eSecure IP modules which provides a complete security solution for all platforms. Development and manufacturing take place at the headquarters near Brussels, Belgium. Local sales and support are handled by worldwide branch offices. For more information, visit www.silexinsight.com .

About Medium Inc

Medium Inc. is a South Korean company, which is a leading provider of blockchain platforms and enterprise security solutions such as cryptography wallets, ID cards and anti-virus solutions. Medium’s BPU (Blockchain Processing Unit) technology delivers a splendid experience to all the members in the blockchain network. Medium believes Medium’s proprietary BPU will dramatically change the blockchain industry. For more information, visit https://themedium.io/eng/