I spoke extensively with Steven Sprague at the Texas Bitcoin Conference over the weekend and got some better insights into what Rivetz is about.
Rivetz is a proprietary architecture that is licensing with various chip manufacturers for use of the Trusted Computing Environment (or the like) which has been shipping on many Intel and ARM chips for years. Many millions of these are out there as the capability has been standard on many chips for years, though no one has utilized the capability. Rivetz’s mother company has been the main mover in getting this capability built into a lot of these chips. Now Rivetz is formed to exploit their capabilities.
Essentially the TCE allows operation of a mini OS that the main OS can’t see, and allows the screen to display data that only the TCE can see.
An app developer will then establish a relationship with Rivetz to access this capability for their app. The relationship is established by the consumer via an in-app purchase from Rivetz, of which the app developer gets a cut.
What is will allow is that private keys, key login data, etc. are isolated from the main OS’s view. This is a device-specific relationship, thus tying data security to physical security to a large degree. You will be able to have multiple devices which share the relationship and give you various portals which can constitute proofs of identity. If you lose a device, you’ll most likely know it and be able to exclude it. If a keylogger steals your passwords or private keys, you don’t know it till you’re screwed.
Infinity Algorithms is a new company dedicated to developing on the SAFE network and is engaging in talks with them to utilize Rivetz for their apps on the SAFE protocol.
Basically, while you can log in to SAFE, or a bitcoin wallet, or whatever, on any device, you have the possibility of having your key credentials stolen by a key logger or the like. With the Rivetz app running on your devices, you can reasonably assure that those private keys are not visable to any malware. This would be a hardware/software union that would be below the SAFE Launcher, for initial access to the device, or whenever you needed to expose your keys. It could also hold your bitcoin keys, wallet ids, etc.
I found it interesting and probably worth using, but if you ask me more technical questions I probably won’t be able to help further.
Apple has a similar capability built in to their devices, apparently, but they hold proprietary access, so we’ll have to see what they do. Maybe they’ll let Rivetz in and maybe not.