Enigma something that could answer our cries about privacy and scalability in our beloved cryptoland. Intriguing information, eh?

Especially, if you are a veteran in the cryptocurrency arena. This could be equivalent to striking gold amid a desert. Sorry if I sound like I’m exaggerating a bit. Lol. But after the DAO incident with Ethereum, this seems worth it. Especially, the secret contract feature.

So after a lengthy prologue., let’s get stuck into this platform, shall we?

What is Enigma:

Enigma is a decentralized blockchain-based protocol that employs revolutionary privacy technology to allow its developers to create “scalable, end-to-end decentralized applications without requiring a trusted third party service.”Now whether or not it has been successful in its endeavor is a story for another day.

It has been developed by a couple of MIT graduates as a start-up venture in the U.S.A and ENG is its ticker symbol on various exchanges and the coinmarketcap. The platform aims to combine blockchain technology with Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) for building a platform that is both supple and safeguarding of your privacy.

It has been built by leveraging the power of a chain of computers that are capable of storing and computing data in an anonymous manner. However, these computers can’t see the data they’re operating on through a feature known as a secret contract ( more about this later in the article ). This has been done to provide 100% anonymity of activity in my opinion bearing the DAO incident in mind.

Moving on. The Enigma crypto coin can be a little challenging to comprehend for newcomers to the industry as you may have to read the whitepaper, apart from this post and several other posts and videos that you may want to indulge in for starters to be able to get a grip on things.

Nevertheless, at Coingyan we do try to cover all sorts of coins in an in-depth fashion so that you guys can get max. info. related to any coin you desire. But still, if you want to read more articles, watch more videos about your favorite coins you’re free to do so.

Furthermore, Enigma has been developed in such a way that it can connect to any existing blockchain and discharge personal and computationally demanding to cipher to an off-chain network.

All of these transactions are expedited by the blockchain which administers access-control through digital signatures and programmable permissions.

The required code is implemented both on the blockchain (public part) and on Enigma ( private or computationally intensive part ).

On Enigma, the validation of blocks happens in a private and precise manner, whereas on any other blockchain only accurate verification of blocks is possible. You can also view and audit the legitimateness of the validation process as it already stored within the blockchain.

They also provide a scripting language to anyone who wishes to deploy decentralized end-to-end decentralized applications using private contracts ( more on this later on in this article ).

Mission and Vision of Enigma

According to the Official Enigma whitepaper, their mission and vision statement is as follows ” Our goal is to enable developers to build ‘privacy by design’, end-to-end decentralized applications, without a trusted third party.”

Secret Contracts: What are they?

Secret contracts are Enigmas way of building smart contracts wherein the data that gets hoarded on the chain is stored in an encrypted and an anonymous manner. However, you can still interact with this data despite it being encrypted and private.

Individual or group nodes (i.e. mining pools) on the network can still validate the legitimateness of the blocks being mined on the platform without exposing the sensitive data that is contained within these blocks.

Problems Intent to Solve

Enigma is looking to solve the following problems through its cryptocurrency in the ecosphere of blockchain technology.

Storage

According to Enigma(ENG), blockchains aren’t merely to be considered as databases for storing routine transactions which anyone can view. It’s for this purpose that it consists of a decentralized off chain distributed hash-table (or DHT) which can be accessed through its blockchain that stores references to the data being hoarded but there is no direct access to any sensitive itself.

Enigma believes that all sorts of confidential consumer data need to get encrypted first then only get stored in its chain. Access-control protocols have also been programmed into its blockchain for maintaining user privacy. Enigma also offers simple APIs in its scripting language for accomplishing these types of tasks.

Privacy-enforcing computation

Enigma’s network is capable of validating blocks efficiently without having to leak any sort of information to any of its nodes. It can manage all of this while still having correct execution regarding block verification. This can be viewed and audited on its chain as the information is already stored over there.

This is a vital aspect of this blockchain if one has to even consider the fact of substituting currently available centralized mediums and trusted overlay networks that are responsible for handling acute business related info. in a manner that counteracts all the benefits received from a blockchain, ultimately, with blockchain technology one day.

Heavy processing

For a second if the question of privacy is removed from the picture, the question of scalability still remains. As in the blockchain currently, in my opinion, is incapable of scaling rapidly for settling several complex transactions in a fast and an efficient manner. For example- Bitcoin. It’s experiencing a very VERY rough time in terms of achieving its goals of scalability on its platform.

However, the enigma platform is being made use of to operate all this heavy duty publicly verifiable computations that get publicized through the blockchain. Thus, solving the problem of scalability concerning the verification of its blocks in a faster and an efficient way by offloading a lot of burden from the shoulders of the blockchain that it gets connected with.

Enigmas Catalyst Feature

The Catalyst is the very first application that has been developed on the Enigma chain. It supports 90 cryptocurrency exchanges such as Bittrex, Poloniex, etc.

It consists of a set of tools for “data-driven crypto asset investing and research” as per their official site.

Now I don’t know about you but the words data-driven investing and research are like music to my ears. Why? Because you can analyze your mistakes, formulate new strategies and all the other good stuff that is almost a pre-requisite for successful trading be it in the cryptoland or the stock market, forex, hedge funds, etc. To top that up you can also share and curate data for the purpose of building profitable investment strategies. And to make things even more exciting you can test your strategies through the powerful trading tools that are provided on the Catalyst platform.

In short, through Catalyst, you get access to trading info. ( shared and curated ), tools to test your trading strategies and a community of sorts all in one place. Now is that good news or is that good news.

Another crucial piece of information is that since it can get really scary to trade with real money, therefore, Catalyst has implemented a trading feature known as paper trading wherein you can test drive your trading strategies in the real world and get the facts on paper. A good way to iron out some issues with your strategies. However, this is just my perception of this thing.

You, my coiners, on the other hand, absolutely MUST perform your own individual research and then use your own discretion, formulate your own strategies to trade. The cryptomarket is extremely volatile and you should only invest that much money that you are willing to lose. Unless your friend’s a Crypto guru or crypto genius of some sort. Then it’s a different story.

Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that you HAVE to use your own discretion and strategies and perform your own individual research before investing money into the crypto market arena. Never trust anyone with your money. It’s your money that is why you must perform your own individual research and formulate your own strategies before investing.

Reiterating my point again,”The cryptomarket is extremely volatile and you should only invest that much money that you are willing to lose.”

Incentives

Given that Enigma is neither a blockchain nor a cryptocurrency, the way nodes get incentivized here is through fees instead of mining rewards for providing computational resources. However, full nodes are required to make a security deposit and fraudulent behavior is punishable on the platform.

Security Deposit

To be able to partake in all of the happenings on the network, i.e., storing data, performing computations on the network, and receiving fees, every single full node is required to pay a security deposit to a private contract. As soon as a computation is completed a private contract verifies whether or not the computation was tampered with in any given way whatsoever.

However, if it is found out that a particular node was in fact meddling with any specific computation then as a punishment he will have his funds abated and split amongst other candid nodes. After this, the computation process is carried forward without the fraudulent node.

Computation fees

All the requests within the Enigma network for the purpose of data hoarding, data retrieval or computation, etc, to be executed require a specific fee that is to be incurred that’s identical to gas in Ethereum.

However, as opposed to Ethereum where every computation is executed by a single node on the platform, within Enigmas platform for every single computation to be carried out the participation of several individual nodes that need to be incentivized for the co-operation to the Enigma Network is mandatory.

It is measured in rounds on the Enigma Network, just in case, you’re curious about it.

Furthermore, it’s to be noted that every function on Enigma consists of rounds of addition and multiplication gates each of which requires certain rounds to be accomplished.

Every single node participating in a computation is paid a lump sum amount in accordance with the number of rounds it was involved with and the amount of work i.e. addition, multiplication, etc put in by that specific node.

Given that the platform is Turing-complete it is not always possible to make accurate estimates of each request that is made on Enigma.

After this, as soon as the computation is completed, its cost is deducted from the account balance that’s maintained by every single node on the platform.

Unless the minimum threshold concerning the account balance is reached any request made on the platform will not get ENTERTAINED.

Storage fees

Any fee pertaining to data storage is market-based and time sensitive.

A hosting contract if any will be automatically recouped using the owner’s account balance.

If the account balance is on the lower end of the spectrum then until the user deposits additional funds into his account his access to his individual data will be limited and he may get kicked out of his own account if he doesn’t top up his balance in the near future.

Application

A couple of ways that the technology of Enigma has been utilized is as follows:

Data marketplace

A place where business can sell access to their data to individual consumers on a platform guaranteeing autonomous control, privacy and high levels of security. For example, Pharma companies in search of aiding patients through clinical trials could scan genomic databases.

Cryptobank

With Enigma, it’s possible to operate a full-blown crypto bank wherein you can take loans, deposit cryptocurrencies, and even purchase some investment related products along with the autonomous control that a blockchain has to offer without ever having to expose sensitive data to the public.

N-factor authentication

Through this feature, the storage and computation of voice, face, and fingerprint recognition is now a possibility.

But what’s so special about this?

Wasn’t this happening earlier?

Yup. You’re absolutely right.

But on Enigma, only the user is granted access to his or her private data. Moreover, if you want an additional level of safety, certain policies can be set up within the platform providing additional keys as and when required within a private contract that remains hidden from the public including any potential attackers that are on the prey for making the next DAO happen.

When Master nodes

As of now, there is no exact date available regarding the deployment of Masternodes on the Enigma platform. The number of coins that you may require to purchase a master node is also not known as of now.

The best and most accurate speculation I’ve come across is on the website of coinbureau.com and they say that an individual may need to possess at least 2,000-10,000 coins to be able to afford themselves a masternode. They also say that you can expect to earn 20-50% yearly returns on operating your masternodes. Not only that large token holders will be able to make contributions to the Enigma platform by enabling them to use their computer as a server.

Roadmap

roadmap of enigma

For more information click here.

Team:

Enigma coin team- coingyan

For more information on Engima coin team visit this link

Official resources:

Where Can You Buy Engima (ENG)

  1. Binance
  2. Bittrex

I would choose this exchnage to buy my enigma cause these are the topmost exchanges and got reliability.

And with that, it’s a Taco wrap to this post. Please remember to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, steemit, Youtube. Any queries that you may have are always welcomed in the comments section below. Until then take care and have a nice day, keep on learning, improving and growing my coiners.

 

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About Author

I am a tech enthusiast & Digital nomad from Dhenkanal, India I've been dealing with Bitcoin since 2014.I started CoinGyan to help users around the globe to learn about popular Cryptocurrencies. Here at CoinGyan, I write about Bitcoin Wallet, Cryptocurrency wallets, & making money from Crypto.

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