Taiwan Uses Web3 Technology To Resist Cyber Attacks From Mainland China

Taiwan's Minister of Digital Affairs, Audrey Tang. (photo: twitter @audreyt)

JAKARTA - Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs plans to apply decentralized technology to its web portal in an effort to counter cyberattacks. The Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) is a Web3 technology that Taiwanese government officials will use for decentralized file sharing.

IPFS identifies content via file hashes, which allows files stored by multiple parties to be found anywhere and accessible with simple HTTP.

This development comes after the controversial visit of US House of Representatives Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan, despite warnings from mainland China.

Since the visit, the government's website has faced several attacks originating in mainland China. This includes a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that renders some sites in Taiwan inaccessible.

Pelosi's visit to Taiwan not only rocked the boat geopolitically but also made waves in the crypto market. Bitcoin rose to its daily resistance at 23,500 US dollars on August 3, the following day.

However, the new MODA site got a makeover through implementing Web3 technology and currently has native site indexes and files available on IPFS.

Taiwan's Minister of Digital, Audrey Tang, told official state media that as of now, the MODA site has not been attacked since it debuted the same day the Chinese military began its drills.

Tang said the site uses a combination of Web3 and Web2 tools.

“It uses the Web3 structure, which is linked to the global blockchain community and the global Web2 backbone network. So if it could be removed, everything from Ethereum to NFT would be removed, which seems unlikely," Tang said as quoted by Cointelegraph.

According to officials in Taipei, Taiwan experienced nearly 5 million cyberattacks every day or at least scanned system vulnerabilities last year.

The implementation of Web3 technology is a positive step towards implementing emerging technologies. Although Tang did highlight the risks of other Web3 assets such as crypto in activities such as money laundering.

Taiwan's relationship with crypto has had its ups and downs. Recently, the country indirectly banned the purchase of cryptocurrencies by credit card after the chief financial regulator compared cryptocurrencies to online gambling.

Nonetheless, the country, like many other countries around the world, is piloting its own central bank digital currency (CBDC). Currently, they are distributing their digital currency to five Taiwanese banks for distribution.