Question 1

What does mintBlue do?

Accepted Answer

mintBlue is privacy-preserving data exchange between organisations. When you have to decide on data another organisation holds, the record stays with its holder and only the field or answer you are entitled to travels, often a yes or a no. It runs next to the systems you already have, and every exchange lands in a tamper-evident audit trail that can be checked afterwards.

Question 2

What is privacy-preserving data exchange?

Accepted Answer

Exchanging data between organisations so that each party receives only what it is entitled to, the source record stays with its holder, and the exchange itself can be proven afterwards. Privacy-enhancing technologies such as selective disclosure and a tamper-evident audit trail make that possible; they do not replace the legal basis for sharing.

Question 3

Does mintBlue use a blockchain?

Accepted Answer

Yes, as a tamper-evident log for one part: the record of what happened. Signatures, timestamps and proofs of each exchange are anchored on a public, append-only log that no single party, mintBlue included, can rewrite unnoticed. No payload data goes there: you decide per field what is stored where, so personal data stays in the storage you choose. Your team works with APIs and the audit trail, and nobody on your side has to hold or trade a coin or a token.

Question 4

Which organisations is mintBlue for?

Accepted Answer

Organisations that have to decide on data another organisation holds: public agencies, banks and payment providers, supply chains and other regulated organisations. The cases range from real-time VAT verification built with the Belastingdienst to emissions data shared across a supply chain with Dockflow.

Question 5

How is this different from MPC or a data clean room?

Accepted Answer

Multi-party computation (MPC) and clean rooms let organisations compute on data nobody gets to see: one question in, one answer out. mintBlue streams data between departments and organisations as it changes and records who shared what, when and on which mandate. MPC and mintBlue work together: mintBlue's matching uses building blocks many MPC protocols share, and the event stream can feed an MPC platform with new events instead of whole datasets.

Question 6

Can it run entirely inside our environment?

Accepted Answer

Yes for the connector and its data store: they can run on your premises or in your own cloud account, with the keys under your control. Only the exchange and its proof leave: the exchange to the other organisations, the proof to the public log.

Question 7

Does this only work if everyone joins?

Accepted Answer

No. Your own records become provable from day one: signed at the source, verifiable years later. Every partner that joins adds reach, but the value does not wait for them.

Question 8

How does mintBlue help with GDPR?

Accepted Answer

Data stays with its owner and is not copied into a central database. Data is encrypted under keys you control, so another organisation opens only what it is entitled to, and every exchange is recorded with the mandate it was made under. Compliance stays the responsibility of each organisation; mintBlue makes data minimisation and accountability easier to show.

Question 9

What are privacy-enhancing technologies (PET), and does mintBlue use them?

Accepted Answer

Privacy-enhancing technologies let organisations share or check data without exposing more than needed. In the OECD's four groups, mintBlue covers data obfuscation through selective disclosure, part of encrypted processing through matching on blinded tokens, and data accountability through a tamper-evident audit trail. PET does not create a legal basis on its own: who may see what is agreed first.

Question 10

Can we prove compliance without handing over sensitive data?

Accepted Answer

Often, yes. You share the fact another party needs, such as a yes or a no, and keep the underlying records. The audit trail shows what was shared and when, so an auditor can check the exchange without opening your books.

Question 11

How does data sovereignty work in practice?

Accepted Answer

Each party keeps its own data, in the storage it chooses. What other organisations receive is what you chose to share, and nobody can change the record of each exchange unnoticed, so every party can check it is working from the same history. You can export your data at any time.

Question 12

Which regulations does this help with?

Accepted Answer

Rules that ask organisations to share or prove data across a chain: GDPR for data minimisation and accountability, ViDA for real-time VAT reporting, and CSRD, CSDDD and the Digital Product Passport for traceable data across companies. mintBlue helps show what was shared; compliance stays with each organisation.

Question 13

How long does a typical deployment take?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the exchange and on how many parties take part. We start with one exchange: what has to be proven, to whom, and what may not leave your organisation. We set it up with your architects step by step, with a go or no-go after each step, and every next exchange reuses the same connector and event stream.

Question 14

Do our developers need special expertise?

Accepted Answer

No. Your developers work with standard APIs and familiar event-driven patterns, and the connector runs next to the systems they already know. The underlying infrastructure is abstracted away, the same way you build web applications without thinking about TCP/IP.

Question 15

What does the onboarding process look like?

Accepted Answer

It starts with an architecture session in which our team maps your data flows and picks the right first exchange. We set it up in your own environment, test it with you, often on test data first, and then take it to production. You have a dedicated architect throughout.

Question 16

What happens to our data if mintBlue ceases to operate?

Accepted Answer

Your data stays yours, in the storage you choose, and the record of each exchange stays on the public log, so you can retrieve and check it without us.

Question 17

Is mintBlue a platform we get locked into?

Accepted Answer

No. The protocol is open and royalty-free and the audit trail sits on a public log, so any provider can retrieve and serve your data, and you can leave without our help.

Question 18

How does trust work without a central authority?

Accepted Answer

Every exchange is signed by its sender and recorded on a public, append-only log, so any participant can check independently that nothing has changed.

Question 19

How is security handled?

Accepted Answer

Data is encrypted under keys you control, and every organisation signs with its own keys. Projects with public organisations are set up within their security requirements; talk to an architect for the details.

Question 20

Can mintBlue handle enterprise-scale workloads?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The public log underneath has 50M+ transactions per day capacity, proven in a 2023 benchmark. Ordering, compute and storage are separate, so each part scales on its own, and for each exchange we size the connectors with your architects.

Frequently asked questions

About mintBlue

Data & Compliance

Getting Started

Trust & Security

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