HelixChain

HelixChain is a blockchain platform that lets patients prove genetic traits cryptographically without ever exposing their full genomic sequence. Personalized medicine depends on sensitive markers — BRCA1/2 for cancer risk, CYP2D6 for drug metabolism — but sharing a raw genome to verify a single variant is a permanent, irreversible privacy loss. HelixChain replaces "hand over your DNA" with "prove the one fact that matters."

how it works

Patients upload encrypted variant data to IPFS and generate zero-knowledge proofs for specific genetic markers that doctors can verify on-chain — without the underlying sequence ever leaving the patient's control. Researchers query aggregated mutation data for studies while individual privacy stays absolute. Three portals serve patients, healthcare providers, and researchers, with real-time updates over WebSockets.

how it was built

A 4-person team split the work: the patient portal and wallet integration in React/TypeScript, the doctor and researcher portals with Recharts and Three.js visualizations, an Express backend with a Bull/Redis proof-generation queue, and the zero-knowledge circuits written in the Compact language on the Halo2 proving system. The platform runs on Midnight, with Lace wallet for on-chain identity and Pinata/IPFS for encrypted off-chain storage.

outcome

HelixChain won 1st place at the MLH x Midnight Hackathon, recognized for applying zero-knowledge proofs to a real and unsolved privacy problem in genomic medicine.