Motivation of SUPREMS Platform

In an increasingly interconnected world with mutually distrustful or partially distrustful stakeholders, implementation of robust and high-performance systems has grown in importance. This is demonstrated by the significant rise in interest towards both permissionless and permissioned Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain-based systems in recent years. Therefore, we introduce SUPREMS - Secure Usable Platform for Robust Extensible Modular Services. With the SUPREMS we aim to support development of services that can withstand various types of attackers and allow combining and reuse fitting technologies. SUPREMS was initially started during the privately funded time of ACE-SUPPRA and continues now in TUM funded phase.

We aim to achieve it by creating a modular platform that enables use of suitable state-of-the art building blocks inspired by Web3 domain. Building blocks can be chosen based on requirements (e.g., performance, security, organization structure, …). We aim to provide method and tools to demonstrate that specific instantiation of the platform, which means architecture, software and deployment, meets the specific requirements.

We categorize the platform to five layers based on individually functionality and capabilities offered by the layer.

1. Infrastructure layer focuses on deployments and security guarantees offered by trusted hardware
2. Communication layers touches on the traditional transport protocols, but also recent privacy preserving network solutions
3. Middleware layer serves as robust P2P layer possibly extended via BFT-SMR mechanisms
4. Application layer provides user facing features relying on the underlying functionalities
5. Crypto mechanisms can operate on various layers and provides fundamental primitives for respective layers.