This highlights a provisional U.S. patent application (Serial No. 62/894,052) for “DECO: Decentralized Oracles for TLS,” developed with support from the National Science Foundation (CNS-1514163, CNS-1564102, CNS-1704615) and the U.S. Army Research Office (W911NF1610414), indicating a rare collaboration between academic research and military funding to enhance data verification in transport layer security.
DECO, as detailed in the 2019 arXiv paper (1909.00938) by Fan Zhang and others, uses decentralized oracles to prove data provenance from TLS-secured websites, potentially revolutionizing digital identity systems like Chainlink’s, which could challenge traditional centralized identity models backed by institutions.
The involvement of U.S. government funding raises questions about the technology’s dual-use potential, as peer-reviewed studies (e.g., IEEE Security & Privacy, 2020) suggest decentralized oracles could secure financial systems but also enable surveillance or control if misapplied by state actors.
