The Story So Far
Digital assets—from music to patents, from code to creative works—represent over $925 billion in global value annually.
Yet after decades of technological advancement, creators still face the same fundamental problem: how to share their work while maintaining control.
Web2's answer was intermediaries. Platforms that host, distribute, and monetize on behalf of creators. This worked, to a point. Netflix and Spotify proved people will pay for convenience. But creators traded control for reach, accepting platform rules, opaque payments, and the constant risk that terms might change or services might disappear.
Web3 promised a different path. Blockchain delivered on this promise for digital money—millions use DeFi daily because the value proposition is clear. But for intellectual property and creative works, blockchain alone hasn't been enough. Current systems can verify who owns a token, but they can't prevent unauthorized copying of the actual files those tokens represent.
This gap matters more as we enter an era where AI agents will outnumber human users online. These autonomous systems need infrastructure for trustless transactions—ways to access, evaluate, and pay for digital assets without human oversight.
What We're Building
SafeIdea is developing the missing infrastructure between cryptographic ownership and practical control. We're not trying to fight the nature of digital content with better locks. Instead, we're creating systems where legitimate access is easier than theft, where every interaction creates evidence, and where creators set their own terms.
Our approach combines three elements:
Technical Infrastructure
Using threshold cryptography from LIT Protocol and vetKeys from Internet Computer, we ensure files remain encrypted until specific conditions are met. Content addressing through IPFS and Filecoin makes any tampering immediately detectable.
Legal Bridges
Technology alone isn't enough. We're building systems that generate court-admissible evidence, creating bridges between cryptographic protection and legal frameworks. Our internal projects demonstrate this by integrating directly with patent systems and creating documentation that meets legal standards.
Agentic IP Monitoring
We enable AI agents to search for digital assets or services on the net and, using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), compare them with your encrypted assets or services without decrypting them. This service establishes additional legal protections for critical infrastructure for the emerging decentralized digital asset economy.
Public Projects
Conciliator (Filecoin/IPFS/LIT/Storacha)
Our live demonstration platform showcasing threshold cryptography in action. Users can:
- Upload files that are immediately encrypted with distributed keys via LIT Protocol
- Set custom access conditions (payment, time limits, specific users)
- Track every access with immutable logs stored on Filecoin
- Generate legal documentation automatically for each transaction
The platform uses Storacha to seamlessly integrate LIT Protocol's programmable encryption with Filecoin's persistent, content-addressed storage. This combination ensures that files remain tamper-evident while access rules are enforced by the network itself—no single point of control or failure.
View the code on GitHub →
SafeIdea ICP (VetKeys)
SafeIdea ICP is similar to Conciliator, but is based on Internet Computer's ecosystem, leveraging:
- VetKeys for threshold encryption within canisters
- Internet Identity for seamless user authentication
- On-chain computation for access control logic
- Native integration with ICP's growing AI capabilities
This demonstrates how the same principles can be implemented across different Web3 infrastructures. By building on both Filecoin/LIT and ICP architectures, we avoid platform lock-in and show that trustless sharing isn't dependent on any single technology stack.
PHE Copy Protector (Paillier Homomorphic Encryption)
Our prototype for encrypted compute copy protection demonstrates how documents can be compared for similarity without ever being decrypted. Built on Internet Computer using Paillier partially homomorphic encryption, it enables:
- Similarity scoring between documents while keeping reference materials fully encrypted
- Privacy-preserving plagiarism detection and copyright protection
This project presents the first deployed proof of concept homomorphic service on ICP, and represents a future where all services and digital assets will be protected by encrypted computation.
View the code on GitHub →
Where This Leads
The convergence is happening now. Internet Computer's vetKeys are production-ready for privacy-preserving applications. Filecoin's 2025 roadmap extends beyond storage to full Web3 infrastructure. LIT Protocol targets 5x performance improvements while expanding AI agent support.
More importantly, the need is becoming urgent. As AI agents proliferate, they need ways to transact with digital assets autonomously. A GPT-powered research assistant should be able to purchase access to a dataset. A code generation agent should be able to license algorithms. These transactions need to happen without human intervention, with cryptographic guarantees backing up legal agreements.
SafeIdea is building this infrastructure. Not because we think DRM will suddenly work, or because we believe in technological determinism. But because creators deserve tools that match their needs: control without intermediaries, evidence without surveillance, and commerce without compromise.