The Fireblocks Cryptography Research Team has developed MPC-BAM, a new two-party ECDSA MPC protocol that achieves an ideal balance among the three key efficiency metrics in cryptographic protocols: rounds, communication, and computation.
Multi-party computation (MPC) cryptography protocols are critical for the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem as they enhance security and privacy while allowing direct custody operations.
In this blog, we will explore the impact of MPC cryptography in the blockchain space, the role Fireblocks has played in advancing this technology, and the benefits of the new MPC-BAM cryptography protocol.
Pushing MPC technology forward
Since its inception, Fireblocks has consistently contributed to the MPC wallet space by publishing new free-to-use protocols and releasing open-source code for full transparency. Fireblocks remains at the forefront of the digital asset industry by operating MPC wallets at scale and raising the bar on security by publishing security research that identifies vulnerabilities in existing alternative solutions .
In May 2020, Fireblocks released MPC-CMP (also known as CGGMP), offering significant speed and security enhancements compared to the algorithms available at the time.
For nearly five years, Fireblocks clients have benefited from the speed improvements and enhanced security that MPC-CMP offers over alternative solutions. Our researchers have showcased this enhanced security by identifying and responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities in over 15 major wallet providers. Serving our clients at scale has taught us invaluable lessons.
Our MPC protocols are designed to meet real-world challenges such as horizontal scaling, rapid wallet creation and signing, and minimal network communication. As digital asset usage continues to grow, the speed and security of operations become increasingly critical.
All ECDSA MPC protocols, including two–party variants, compromise at least one of the following metrics: number of rounds (e.g., require more than two rounds of message exchanges between parties), communication cost (e.g., the size of the messages exchanged is high), or computation cost (e.g., generating and processing the messages is computationally expensive).
Introducing the Fireblocks MPC-BAM Protocol
The new Fireblocks MPC-BAM technology enables us to scale our operations to meet clients’ needs while providing the high level of security they demand, and It fulfills our commitment to deliver a direct custody offering where clients hold their own key material for both Treasury and Embedded Wallets.
Specifically, the new protocol will be able to benefit all clients across all use cases on ECDSA-based blockchains (e.g., Bitcoin, Ethereum, all EVM chains, and others).
The new protocol is particularly well-suited for embedded wallet use cases—where creating millions of wallets quickly is essential and wallet creation speed was a bottleneck in previous protocols—as well as for high-performance applications like payments, social networks, and games.
Fireblocks MPC-BAM Protocol performance advantages
The Fireblocks MPC-BAM protocol delivers exceptional performance by being five times faster and requiring fewer rounds than other communication-optimized protocols. Additionally, it uses 50 times less communication bandwidth than compute-optimized protocols.
As the only 2PC protocol that effectively balances optimal round complexity, low communication, and low computation, MPC-BAM delivers unparalleled real-world performance across all current blockchain self-custody wallet use cases.
Collectively, these improvements contribute to approximately a 100x increase in overall performance for signing and wallet creation compared to our previous setups, dramatically enhancing scalability.
See Fireblocks in action
Curious to see how Fireblocks helps businesses secure their digital asset operations? Request a demo here.
