We at ISRG have been building Divvi Up, a privacy-preserving metrics system that uses a novel multi-party computation system, since mid-2021. Since we started, we've shepherded five drafts of the Distributed Aggregation Protocol (DAP) through the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) alongside the development of our own implementations of that protocol. We're creating a service that will reduce the unique information application users expose about themselves and their behaviors by turning individual data points into aggregate, anonymized metrics.
Protocol Development
Divvi Up has been running DAP-02 and DAP-04 for some time now. We are looking to land on DAP-05 shortly as a long-running version upon which we will build our production service. The biggest difference between DAP-04 and DAP-05 is an improvement in the performance of the aggregation subprotocol thanks to an approximately 50% reduction of network requests. This efficiency gain will decrease the cost of running Divvi Up and improve our ability to scale. We are collaborating with initial partners to ensure there is an ecosystem of providers who are all interoperable on DAP-05.
BYO Helper
We want to make it as easy as possible for application developers to get aggregate, anonymized metrics through Divvi Up. Our vision for the service is to make Divvi Up a one-stop-shop where we will operate as the primary aggregation server and take care of finding a secondary "helper" server for the subscriber. However, we know that some subscribers will want to choose their own helper server, sometimes even filling that role themselves. We've been working on enabling a Bring Your Own (BYO) helper option in Divvi Up to enable this flexibility. Subscribers can use our implementation of DAP, called Janus, which comes with the necessary control plane interfaces to make this a possibility out of the gate.
Subscriber Onboarding
One of the key elements of a successful self-serve service is the ability to spin up new metrics collection without too much time investment or the involvement of a Real Live Human. The Divvi Up management console is under construction to achieve just that. We've sketched out a flow for new subscribers to determine what metrics they want to collect and over what period of time. Over the coming months, we will continue to develop the management console so it can help subscribers get up and running quickly, and then enable subscribers to efficiently get metrics that can provide valuable insight to inform application design and functionality decisions. If you're interested in being one of the first to test out the system, join our waitlist.
New Funding
We've invested over $2M of funding from contributors like Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Open Technology Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Internet Society Foundation, and Meta. We're happy to announce today that Omidyar Network is joining that leading group with a $100,000 grant.
About Divvi Up
Divvi Up is a project of the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), the organization behind Let's Encrypt and Prossimo. If you or your organization are interested in helping advance the work of ISRG via funding, advocacy, or another idea, please get in touch via sponsor@abetterinternet.org.