Open Grant Proposal: FileTrust, Threshold-Encrypted Storage Layer for IPFS

Project Name: FileTrust
Proposal Category: Research & protocols
Individual or Entity Name: ElectraSi S.L. (Barcelona, Spain)
Proposer: Mina Namazi (Github: TheMyna)
Project Repo(s): https://github.com/FileTrust
(Optional) Filecoin ecosystem affiliations: None at this time.
(Optional) Technical Sponsor: N/A
Do you agree to open source all work you do on behalf of this RFP under the MIT/Apache-2 dual-license?: Yes

# Project Summary
IPFS provides content-addressed, decentralized storage but lacks a native encryption or access-control layer. Any data pinned to IPFS is publicly accessible to anyone who knows the CID. This makes IPFS unusable for regulated data such as healthcare records, industrial IoT telemetry, insurance claims, and any dataset subject to GDPR, HIPAA, or the EU Data Act because there is no mechanism to enforce who can decrypt stored content or audit access.
FileTrust solves this by adding a threshold encryption layer on top of IPFS. The protocol combines Threshold ElGamal encryption with Distributed Key Generation (DKG) and Rabin's Information Dispersal Algorithm (IDA) so no single party, including the data owner, holds a complete decryption key. Data is encrypted before being split and stored across IPFS nodes. A t-of-n threshold access control policy means, for example, 3 of 5 designated shareholders must independently approve before decryption. All access events are recorded on-chain as an immutable audit trail.
The architecture is peer-reviewed and published in IEEE Access. Our implementation demonstrates end-to-end performance: DKG ceremony in 4.81s, encryption in 1.78s, threshold decryption in 2.60s. The MVP will be production-ready by March 2026.

## Impact
IPFS and Filecoin are leading decentralized storage networks, but face the same fundamental limitation: stored data is either public or relies on the uploader to encrypt it independently, with no protocol-level access governance. This prevents adoption in sectors where data access must be controlled, auditable, and compliant with privacy regulations. As a result, regulated industries such as healthcare, industrial manufacturing, insurance, and government cannot use IPFS or Filecoin, locking out large potential storage markets.
FileTrust addresses this by providing a reusable, open-source encryption and access-control layer that any IPFS or Filecoin application can integrate with. By making threshold-encrypted storage a composable primitive, FileTrust expands Filecoin's addressable market from "data that can be public" to "all data." This is important because the EU Data Act (2025) and GDPR enforcement create legal requirements for auditable, privacy-preserving data storage, and FileTrust is designed to satisfy them.
If this is not addressed, regulated data will continue to flow to centralized cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) by default, as no decentralized alternative provides the access control and auditability required. FileTrust makes IPFS/Filecoin a viable option for these workloads.

## Outcomes

The final deliverables for this project are:
Open-source threshold encryption library for IPFS. A production-ready SDK that enables any developer to encrypt data with threshold ElGamal, split it via IDA, store fragments on IPFS, and enforce t-of-n access control for decryption. Licensed MIT/Apache 2.0.
IPFS integration module. A plugin or middleware that hooks into standard IPFS add/get workflows to transparently encrypt on upload and enforce threshold decryption on retrieval.
Technical documentation and developer guide. Complete API reference, integration examples, and a tutorial for adding threshold-encrypted storage to existing IPFS-based applications.
Security audit report. Third-party review of the threshold-encryption implementation, covering correctness, key management, and known attack vectors.
Performance benchmark report. Measured latency, throughput, and storage overhead across varying threshold parameters (t, n) and file sizes relevant to IoT and healthcare workloads.
Success metrics: SDK downloaded by 50+ developers within 3 months of release. At least 2 third-party projects integrate the library. Performance benchmarks are published and reproducible.

## Data Onboarding

FileTrust does not onboard data directly to Filecoin. It enables data onboarding that is currently impossible, as it involves regulated and sensitive datasets (healthcare records, IoT telemetry, insurance claims) that organizations refuse to store on IPFS/Filecoin today because there is no encryption or access control layer. By removing the privacy barrier, FileTrust unlocks new categories of data for the Filecoin network.

Projected indirect data onboarding enabled by FileTrust adoption:

* Month 1: 0 (SDK development phase)
* Month 3: 0 (integration testing phase)
* Month 6: 50-100 GB (initial developer testing and pilot integrations)
* Month 12: 1-5 TB (estimated from first enterprise pilot deployments using the open-source SDK)

## Adoption, Reach, and Growth Strategies

The target audience is developers building IPFS/Filecoin applications handling sensitive or regulated data. This includes healthcare data platforms, IoT data management systems, enterprise backup solutions, and privacy-preserving AI training data pipelines. The broader market for encrypted cloud storage is projected to exceed $15B by 2028.
We are engaging this audience through our IEEE Access publication, which establishes academic credibility in the cryptography community, our presence at MWC Barcelona 2025, and our community of 15,000+ members. We have early-stage enterprise conversations in the healthcare and industrial IoT verticals.
For developer adoption, we will publish the SDK on npm/pip with clear documentation, write tutorial content for the Filecoin and IPFS developer blogs, and present at Filecoin ecosystem events. The first 10 users will come from direct outreach to teams already building on IPFS who have expressed a need for encryption, identified through Filecoin Slack and GitHub discussions. The first 100 will come through developer content, hackathon integrations, and ecosystem partnerships. Encryption Library (Month 1-2)

## Development Roadmap
Milestone 1: Core Threshold Encryption Library (Month 1-2)
Refactor the existing threshold ElGamal + DKG implementation into a standalone, well-documented open-source library.
Implement a clean API for key generation, encryption, partial decryption, and threshold reconstruction
Unit tests and integration tests with >90% code coverage
Team: 2 engineers (cryptography lead + systems developer)
Funding: $15,000
Milestone 2: IPFS Integration Module (Month 3-4)
Build middleware that intercepts IPFS add/get operations to transparently apply threshold encryption and decryption.
Support for configurable threshold parameters (t, n)
IDA-based fragment distribution across multiple IPFS nodes
Compatible with standard IPFS HTTP API and JS/Go clients
Team: 2 engineers (systems developer + IPFS integration specialist)
Funding: $15,000
Milestone 3: Documentation, Audit, and Benchmarks, MVP fully working (Month 5-6)
Complete API documentation and developer tutorial
Third-party security review of cryptographic implementation
Performance benchmarks across file sizes (1KB - 1GB) and threshold configurations
Publication of benchmark results and integration guide
Team: 1 engineer + external auditor
Funding: $20,000

## Total Budget Requested

| Milestone # | Description | Deliverables | Completion Date | Funding |
| 1 |Core threshold encryption library|Open Source SDK + Tests|Month 2|1 5k |
| 2 |IPFS integration module|Middleware for encrypted IPFS add/get|Month 4|1 5k |
| 3 |Docs, security audit, benchmarks|Doc, Audit report, MVP| Month 6| 20k|

## Maintenance and Upgrade Plans

FileTrust is the core product of ElectraSi S.L., a venture-backed deep-tech company. The open-source libraries produced under this grant will be actively maintained as part of our ongoing product development. We plan to extend the library to support proactive secret sharing (key-share refresh without changing the public key), integration with the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) for on-chain access policies, and post-quantum migration paths. Long-term maintenance is funded through our enterprise SaaS business model and additional grants and investments.

# Team

## Team Members

Ali Farahpoor, Co-founder/CEO
Mina Namazi, Co-founder/CTO
Prof. Oscar Esparza, Academic Advisor
Prof. Miguel Soriano, Academic Advisor
8 additional team members across development, design, and advisory

## Team Member LinkedIn Profiles

Ali Farahpoor:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-farahpoor/
Mina Namazi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mina-namazi-phd-64b36426/
Morteza Hosseini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seyed-mohammadreza-hosseini-b17623335/
Aref Azymi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aref-azimy-54687b178/
Farnoush Farahpour: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farnoush-farahpour-56bb6a65/

## Team Website

https://www.filetrust.io/

## Relevant Experience

Ali Farahpoor (Co-founder/CEO, IEEE Member) is a PhD candidate in Network Engineering at UPC Barcelona. He holds a Master's degree in Information Security from the Technical University of Malaysia (2014) and has over 8 years of experience leading FileTrust's product development. His professional background spans electronics, software development, IoT, and cloud computing. He is the lead author of the IEEE Access paper and a previous IEEE Access publication on IoT-driven fleet management systems.

Mina Namazi (Co-founder/CTO) holds a PhD in Cryptography with a specialization in privacy-enhancing technologies. She designed FileTrust's complete cryptographic architecture: threshold ElGamal encryption with DKG-generated keys, integration of the Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) protocol, the Information Dispersal Algorithm (IDA), and all formal security proofs (IND-CPA reduction to DDH, threshold availability proof, and a composition lemma for threshold ElGamal with DKG). Her research covers lattice-based cryptographic proofs, security evaluations, and the deployment of zero-knowledge protocols in production. She currently serves as the head of cryptography, building a modular Coq library of formalizations of ring signatures, linkability games, and machine-checked negligibility properties. She served as a principal researcher at Soonami, a Web3 venture builder. She is the author of a couple of academic papers and a co-author of the journal submission for FileTrust's paper, which presents FileTrust's formal security analysis.

## Team code repositories

# Additional Information
We learned about the Open Grants Program through the Filecoin Foundation website and the devgrants GitHub repository.
Best email for grant discussion: namazi.mina@gmail.com

Additional context: FileTrust's IEEE Access paper is available at https://www.filetrust.io/docs/whitepaper.pdf. The protocol addresses a gap identified by multiple Filecoin ecosystem participants, including the lack of a native encryption and access-control layer for IPFS-stored data. We believe this work directly supports Filecoin's mission to preserve humanity's most important information by enabling the storage of sensitive data on decentralized networks without sacrificing privacy or regulatory compliance.