Encrypting Ethereum: Ten Network Introduces Private Smart Contracts
Two years ago, we embarked on an epic journey to design and build the first Ethereum Layer 2 that goes beyond scalability and introduces EVM smart contracts with private shared state.
Today, we're happy to announce that we hit the first significant milestone, the release of our public Testnet that rolls up to the Ethereum-Sepolia Testnet.
Smart contracts written for Ethereum will have secrets and free secure randomness for the first time. Even more remarkable is that developers won't need to learn anything new to harness these capabilities.
This is a big deal because decentralized Ethereum dApps can finally compete in functionality, speed, and cost with their web2 counterparts!
First step: Full Data Transparency
Blockchain data has always been transparent.
This was never the explicit goal but a design tradeoff to achieve decentralization. The key property has always been “correctness transparency.” In the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi hoped privacy could be achieved by keeping addresses anonymous.
A few years later, Ethereum introduced smart contracts with shared state, a feature that unlocked the building of DeFi primitives like decentralized exchanges and lending protocols.
This massive step forward magnified the importance of the data transparency tradeoff. It showed that your options are somewhat limited even though you can now build apps with complex functionality that can interoperate on a decentralized platform. To make it worse, transparency exposes users to predatory practices like sandwich trading.
This might seem like a surprising statement because Ethereum is extremely successful. But, if you don't believe me, let's consider for a minute what it takes to build the on-chain version of a simple card game like Poker. You'll quickly find that you can't hide the players' cards since contracts have no secrets.
Data confidentiality is required by all commercial applications ever built for a good reason.
Ten: Removing Data Transparency
With the release of the Ten Testnet, the next major innovation in blockchain design has finally arrived.
Regular web2 applications keep secrets using business logic and physical security (only authorized people can access the physical machines). Replicating this feature on a decentralized architecture requires data encryption during storage, transit, and processing. The trickiest challenge is the latter because it implies keeping the execution hidden even from infrastructure operators.
Ten uses secure enclaves, cryptography, and cryptoeconomic incentives to achieve all the necessary properties.
Our approach is to keep the internal state (private variables) of Ten EVM contracts secret by default, the same as the data in any web2 application. It is a matter of smart contract business logic (plain Solidity code) to allow access to information.
User and Developer experience
We recognize that a new platform with an unfamiliar programming model can face significant adoption challenges, which brings us to another achievement we are immensely proud of. We implemented default data privacy without any EVM or Ethereum RPC interface changes.
As a developer, you don't have to learn any new language and can continue using all your favorite Ethereum tools. DApps written for Ethereum will just work on Ten.
More importantly, you don't have to worry about your users' experience because that is also unchanged.
Call to arms
The Ten Testnet is open!
Come and check it out. Deploying dApps will be rewarded as this is an incentivized testnet. The Ten team will help you with every step from conception to production on Mainnet.
If you are a partner or a developer ready to hack, check out our documentation. If you don't have an immediate idea, you can fork any Ethereum dApp, deploy it, and interact with it.
If you don't have time to write a cool dApp yet, check our test application: "The Guessing Game," to experience how onboarding onto Ten is just 3-clicks.
Not a developer? No worries! Explore exciting ways to join the Ten Testnet through our Galxe Campaign.
If you need help getting started or want to stay in touch, join our Discord.
Note: We recently renamed the protocol from Obscuro to Ten, so you will see both names. At the time of this blog, the renaming is still in progress.
