Nyriad founder and CEO Matthew Simmons pours 80 – 100 hours a week into the Blockchain project.
A Cambridge-based advanced software company, Nyriad, has partnered with Spark-owned cloud provider Revera to pave the way for the New Zealand government to manage sensitive data using Blockchain technology.
Three years in the making, a pilot launched last week will see government organisations test data sets using Nyriad’s real-time Blockchain software platform, delivered from Revera’s Homeland Cloud.
Nyriad founder and CEO Matthew Simmons, a Cambridge local, explained that the pilot will essentially demonstrate that IT trust can be built with the company’s real-time Blockchain File-Systems, enabling public organisations to prove they are handling information in a way that satisfies strict security standards and facilitates real-time data sharing.
“By using mathematics, Blockchain enables you to be able to use a unique number that’s only possible if that file is in the same condition that it originally was,” Simmons explained. “So, a little bit of change, even though it’s not detectable, can actually be mathematically proved, with Blockchain. It’s a way of using math for trust.
“The problem is, because the math is quite computer-intensive, it’s not practical to use on very large files because to prove that that file is in the same condition that it was, may take a long period of time. In our architecture, its essentially instant.”
To make Blockchain run at top speed, Nyriad has essentially been rebuilding IT systems from the ground up, redesigning the computer to run on its graphics chip, rather than the traditional Intel chip, to enable Blockchain to run efficiently.
“We are enabling a solution for trust that has no latency or no time overhead, it’s instant, instantly verifiable trust.”
Over the last three years, Nyriad has generated 80 part-time and full-time jobs in Cambridge. Along with his co-founder and chief technology officer Alex St John, and some of their employees, Simmons tends to work 80 to 100 hours a week on the project.
“We’re trying to do something significant, and that requires significant input,” said Simmons, who has big ambitions for the company over the next decade. “We’ll be 200 strong by the end of next year, at the least. We’re going to keep all the talent here in Cambridge, our goal is to build a Google or a Microsoft in Cambridge.”
