Introducing TezSign: A Digital Signing Platform Utilizing IC Blockchain
Project Highlights
TezSign is a digital signing platform that offers a seamless signing experience for individuals and enterprises. It uses blockchain to ensure the authenticity and immutability of document signing activities’ information and AI to streamline legal contract drafting. TezSign is currently under Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme.
Web3 Advantages
Digital documents can be tampered with, allowing people with malicious intent to modify the clauses for their benefit. This poses a huge risk for critical agreements and creates challenges when a court dispute occurs. Blockchain can solve this issue by providing trust and ensuring all signing information are verifiable, transparent, and immutable.
DocuSign has previously explored and announced plans for blockchain integration, primarily with Ethereum, but the high costs have prevented full-scale adoption 1. In our case, TezSign can adopt the IC blockchain due to its low compute costs 2.
How It Is Built
TezSign primarily uses Java Spring Boot for the backend and Python for certain functionalities. For the front end, React is the library of choice. As for the hosting services, TezSign uses AWS. To integrate the IC blockchain into TezSign, several components have been implemented:
- The document history canister, developed using Motoko, is responsible for storing, updating, and reading documents’ signing information on the IC blockchain.
- The document service creates, processes, and sends documents to users. It also handles various user scenarios such as signing, viewing, and updating documents.
- The blockchain service handles the documents’ user activities and interacts with the document history canister on the IC blockchain. It uses IC4J, an open-source library that facilitates the interaction between Java applications and the IC blockchain 3.
- The SQS service, a messaging queue service provided by AWS, provides fault tolerance and reliability when services communicate with each other through asynchronous calls. SQS is used to send the data of document signing activities from the document service to the blockchain service.
The following is the architecture diagram for integrating the IC blockchain into TezSign.
Internet Computer Superpowers
We explored various ledger technologies to determine which best meets our requirements. For us, the IC blockchain is the most suitable one to use for several reasons.
Subnet Blockchains
Anticipating rapid growth in our user base is crucial. The IC blockchain leverages a unique architecture of subnet blockchains. These subnets operate in parallel, allowing for horizontal scaling to efficiently accommodate increasing workloads. As our platform scales, additional subnets can be dynamically integrated, providing a seamless increase in capacity. The blockchain’s capacity to dynamically adjust to network demands aligns perfectly with our digital signing platform needs, preparing us for potential surges in demand and ensuring uninterrupted service for our users.
Cycle-Based Cost Model
The IC blockchain operates on a novel cost model called the cycle-based system. Unlike traditional blockchains where gas fees fluctuate based on network demand, the IC blockchain uses a fixed unit called cycles. These cycles represent a stable cost for computational operations and storage. For our digital signing platform, this means a predictable expense for each document signed, regardless of the blockchain’s demand levels. This stability allows us to budget accurately and offer consistent pricing to our customers.
Consensus Mechanism
Customer experience is paramount for us. While many popular blockchains struggle with latency issues, leading to delayed transaction confirmations, the IC blockchain distinguishes itself with its exceptional transaction throughput and near-instantaneous finality. This is achieved through its innovative consensus mechanism, which combines elements of chain key technology and threshold cryptography. This mechanism allows for rapid and secure validation of transactions, ensuring that document signings on our platform are processed in a matter of seconds. This ensures that users of our digital signing platform experience smooth and swift document signing processes, reinforcing their trust and satisfaction with our services.
Go-To-Market Strategy
Our strategy is to offer a more trustworthy, easy-to-use product at a lower price point compared to our competitors. We have ongoing discussions with some organizations that are keen on using our product. One is conducting pilot testing and is open to adopting TezSign once our product is ready. We offer our services to individuals and companies with a focus on business-to-business.
Monetization
We will provide subscription tiers based on what the users need. Each tier will have a set of functionalities with certain limits based on the subscription. We will initially offer basic, pro, and enterprise subscriptions.
Status of the Project
The project received GAP funding of 200K SGD from the National Research Foundation, which supported TezSign’s development and the completion of the MVP in 2023. Additionally, we have filed for our own patent for our DID signing technology and are currently conducting pilot testing with our business partners. Furthermore, we have integrated generative AI capabilities for legal contract drafting and summarization. Looking ahead, we are planning spinoff preparations and the official launch of our commercial product.
Resources
- Check out TezSign
- Check out our video
- Follow us on X
- Check out Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme
Future Plans
When TezSign officially launches and starts offering subscriptions, the standalone solution for decentralized identity will potentially be the next major feature we will implement through a bigger developer grant from Dfinity.