Alibaba Cloud Mail releases the first blockchain-based mailbox evidence product, turning emails into “ironclad evidence”

China's Civil Procedure Law stipulates that information formed or stored in electronic media such as online chat records, blogs, microblogs, mobile phone text messages, electronic signatures, domain names, etc. can be regarded as evidence in civil cases. However, the perishable, tamper-proof and easily damaged nature of these electronic data makes it difficult to obtain evidence and authenticate them. Now, due to the application of blockchain technology, electronic data can also be used as "evidence in court". This change may start with email, which is the most widely used in business.

On the evening of October 14, at the blockchain sub-forum of the 2016 Hangzhou Yunqi Conference, Alibaba Cloud Mail and FaDaDa jointly launched the world's first email evidence storage product based on blockchain technology. After the product is launched, users can save the characteristic data (including hash values) of important emails to an authoritative third-party agency; once a dispute arises, users can download the full text of the email by themselves, and after sending it to a judicial appraisal agency to compare the original email characteristic data with the previously stored evidence data, a corresponding evidence appraisal report can be generated, and users can effectively safeguard their legal rights and interests based on this report.

"In business cooperation, an email often contains a lot of important information from the negotiations between the two parties. Since email, as electronic data, still has the characteristics of being easy to disappear, easy to tamper with, and easy to be damaged, once a dispute occurs, simply using email as evidence is easy to be questioned, and it is impossible to give full play to the evidentiary power of email as a convenient communication tool. This not only brings difficulties to the court's evidence collection and review, but also brings obstacles to corporate business dealings." Huang Xiang, founder and CEO of FaDaDa, said that based on decentralized, distributed storage and tamper-proof blockchain technology, the email evidence product jointly launched by Alibaba Cloud Mailbox and FaDaDa can effectively ensure the security and stability of email as electronic evidence, and prevent data tampering.

In August 2016, FaDaDa, Microsoft (China) and Onchain jointly established the world's first large-scale commercial electronic evidence storage blockchain alliance "FaChain", taking the first step in China's exploration of the application of blockchain technology in legal scenarios. The underlying support for Alibaba Cloud's mailbox evidence storage product is provided by "FaChain".

"With the continuous development of the Internet environment, the advantages of blockchain technology in efficiency, security, cost and functionality will become more and more obvious. In the future, blockchain technology will surely expand into more and more fields." Da Hongfei, founder and CEO of Onchain, believes that just as blockchain has brought about changes in the financial industry, the combination of blockchain and electronic evidence storage will undoubtedly completely change the traditional evidence storage business and form a more efficient and convenient way of evidence storage.

The new model of "blockchain + email evidence storage" has been recognized by Yang Dong, vice dean of the Law School of Renmin University of China. Professor Yang Dong believes that the transformation and innovation of blockchain technology on the current legal norms and legal system stems from the trust mechanism reconstructed by its technical architecture. This trust mechanism will simplify the legal relationship or structure in traditional transactions, which is a good prescription in the context of "Internet +".

As more and more economic activities and business exchanges move from offline environments to online environments, more than 70% of people use email as the mainstream communication method in daily business communications and trade exchanges between enterprises and individuals. Therefore, email, as the mainstream communication method in the online environment, has become one of the more important forms of evidence.

"In a large number of legal practices, when parties submit emails as evidence to the court after a dispute occurs, due to the characteristics of emails that can be tampered with and easily forged, the authenticity of the source, content, and sender and receiver of the emails all need to be examined, making authentication difficult."

Wang Limei, director of the Electronic Evidence Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, said that in the process of collecting evidence from emails, the only effective way is for judicial organs such as the police, procuratorate or court to retrieve the original electronic data of emails from email operators as the basis for making a decision. However, this approach involves coordination among multiple parties and is limited by the Internet technology knowledge of notaries. The manpower and time costs are too high and it is not very enforceable.

Wang Limei introduced that "the review and judgment of electronic evidence based on blockchain should take into account three points: authenticity, relevance, and legality. Since blockchain is essentially a secure and reliable distributed database, it provides the best solution to the problem of "how to verify credit in a decentralized system."

"Based on this market pain point, Alibaba Cloud Mail and FaDaDa have reached a strategic cooperation to create the world's first email evidence storage product based on blockchain technology, hoping to provide users with a set of low-cost, high-user experience evidence storage service solutions." Huang Xianglong, director of Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Application Technology, said that under this idea, FaDaDa and Alibaba Cloud Mail have joined forces to launch an email evidence storage product based on blockchain technology.

According to reports, the execution process of the smart contract in the email evidence product includes: personal/enterprise real-name verification and authentication - issuance of digital certificates - signing through PC, APP WeChat - Microsoft Azure cloud storage - blockchain distributed storage and synchronous backup by national authoritative judicial appraisal institutions, etc. At the scene, Huang Xianglong, director of enterprise application technology at Alibaba Cloud, and Huang Xiang, CEO of FaDaDa, also signed the contract for cooperation using the APP and announced the official release of the email evidence product based on blockchain technology.

As a leading domestic electronic contract/electronic signature SaaS platform, FaDaDa is able to solidify and store electronic contract evidence through digital signature technology, anti-tampering technology and third-party time-taking technology. It is a strategic partner of many well-known platforms such as Ctrip, Tongcheng Travel, Meituan.com, and Microsoft (China). In judicial practice, the electronic evidence issued by FaDaDa has been recognized by the Shanghai Arbitration Tribunal, Hangzhou Shangcheng District People's Court, etc., and has become the key evidence in related cases.

Onchain, which provides the underlying framework for Alibaba Cloud's mailbox storage product, is an independent, open source blockchain technology framework. Chief Architect Li Jun introduced the technical framework of Onchain on site. The hierarchical system includes the onchain distributed ledger core layer, the onchain distributed ledger service layer, and the onchain cross-chain protocol. Since the Onchain architecture system has the characteristics of matrix, multi-level, multi-domain, and loose coupling, enterprises can use Onchain as a framework, add their own business modules, and quickly build their own enterprise-level blockchain.

In the future, the difficulties faced by judicial institutions in determining the authenticity of emails will be greatly reduced, thus changing the previous situation where electronic evidence is easy to tamper with and difficult to identify. As emails become more and more useful as electronic evidence, blockchain electronic evidence storage will also begin large-scale commercial use.