Enigma (ENG) is a blockchain project that, by its very own nomenclature, is often misunderstood or misinterpreted by the masses due to its complexity. There has also been a stigma associated with Enigma as a result of the ICO mishap which has unfortunately meant it is often overlooked, but it’s time to evaluate the project on its merits and potential.
This review will only cover the protocol being developed by Enigma and will not touch on Catalyst, the first application built on Enigma’s data marketplace.
What is Enigma?
From the Enigma Website
The Enigma protocol is a second-layer, off-chain network that aims to solve the two biggest problems for blockchains: scalability and privacy. By enabling secure, decentralized data computation and exchange, Enigma allows blockchains to truly fulfil their powerful promise.
In layman’s terms?
Enigma is taking data off of the blockchain and doing the data crunching on a decentralised network of nodes.
Why do we need Enigma? What problem does it solve and how does it do it?
Scalability
Current processing rates on-chain is slow and expensive.
Enigma uses a network of off-chain nodes which can be scaled to meet increasing workloads/demands.
Privacy
Off-chain data storage is generally centralised
The off-chain network of decentralised nodes allows for multi-party computations to take place. By splitting the computation amongst a number of nodes, the protocol achieves off-chain privacy in that the majority of nodes must cooperate in order for the computation to finish and reveal internal data to the on-chain computing node, and at no stage does an off-chain node receive a full view of the complete computation at hand.
Where can Enigma be used?
Everywhere. Being a protocol, Enigma is blockchain agnostic – this means any blockchain in the world can adopt the protocol! For the time being the team is focused on Ethereum, but expansion is possible and on the horizon.
Enigma is currently partnered with AION, a blockchain solution looking to solve interoperability which will look to introduce Enigma globally.
Real world applications of Enigma would include any database which requires private computations. There will always be fear of data safety for industries with sensitive data, but the Enigma protocol mitigates this risk and allows the organisation to consider a blockchain solution. The following industries look to benefit the most from having such a protocol:
• Health
• Banking/Credit
• Identity
• Government
Other reasons why I’ve invested in Enigma
The Team and advisors
The project is being owned and driven by an MIT-bred team that has been working on multi-party computations for years. With advisors such as Alex Pentland, who sits on the Advisory Boards for Google and Nissan, it is hard to find a fault in the team.
Promotion by BlockChain leaders
Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, has recognised the work of Enigma and referenced the protocol in his blog delving into privacy on the blockchain.
The Community
The community is extremely active on Reddit, Telegram and Discord and have been helping raise awareness and understanding of Enigma within the general cryptocurrency community. In fact, I came across the coin on the back of a Reddit post.
Where Enigma can improve
• Roadmap - At the time of posting, there is no official roadmap for the Enigma protocol. Posts on Reddit and conversations on Telegram have provided indicative timeframes, but an official correspondence from the team would be fantastic. No doubt this is a big ask given the complexity of the project...but a nice to have.
• Marketing - The team has not done a lot of marketing thus far and have spent their efforts refining Catalyst and the protocol, which makes sense. 2018 needs to be the year Enigma gets some marketing exposure from the team; the fantastic community which I noted above have been driving the market awareness of the project...
Final Coffee Pitch
Enigma is addressing two of the shortfalls of current blockchains; privacy and scalability. This is an enormous protocol that has the potential to trickle down into every blockchain project in existence and opens the door for organisations to confidently process their data on-chain.
The need for Enigma in the market will become increasingly obvious as wider adoption of blockchain technology takes place and the demand for scaling and privacy increases as there isn’t an industry in the world that wouldn’t want secure, private data processing and computations.
The ceiling for Enigma’s potential is as far as blockchain can stretch and 2018 will be the year the sleeping giant wakes up as its main net goes live.
Disclaimer: I do hold a small amount of Enigma, but am not associated in any way with the team. More information on the project and the team can be found on the Enigma Website.
As always, donations are welcome and very much appreciated.
ETH and ENG Address: 0x11f2665Ecb891ee2f4e357d327cd8dA636D744b7
Enigma (ENG) at time of posting:
$6.73 USD
0.00044808 BTC
0.00598382 ETH
Market Cap: $503,769,414
CMC Rank: 76
Circulating Supply: 74,836,171
Total Supply: 150,000,000
sounds good, but wasnt enigma hacked recently and lost 500.000$
Its hard to tell how reliable is this currency
Wrong. It was super hyped 100% on Ian Balina's spreadsheet before ICO. So such huge FOMO, phishers took advantage of some people trying to get into the ICO with an email sent to the mailing list. The team refunded all the victims with funds they raised outside the ICO. Very old news, odd to even bring up. Their ICO funds, or tech have never been hacked.
Yes, and I believe the team responded swiftly and made adequate changes to ensure future risk is minimised.
As I said in my post, it is important to disassociate with the past and valuate Enigma on its merits as a protocol.
They haven't solved all the problems, but they intelligently applied one of the most fundamental cryptographic technologies that could be used to increase the security of contract platforms. It's a very significant step in the crypto market, and I have reviewed and verified that a good deal of the harder problems like a more reliable asset backed security, securities market, or utility coins... would be better solved by secret contracts and an infrastructure like Enigma's. I think it is nothing short of revolutionary, I don't think the market participants fully understand yet.
The only market participants that would understand and appreciate the value of the technology are participants looking to implement MPC. We're a far way off global adoption of blockchain, but there is an understanding of the need for infrastructure solutions like Enigma.
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