Today’s biweekly update on Enigma promises to reveal the most anticipated news — the Enigma mainnet launch! It was successfully launched on February 13th, 2020 and it prioritizes stable features, community governance, and decentralization over the inclusion of codebases still in development. The mainnet is a proof-of-stake-based blockchain based on Cosmos SDK/Tendermint and secured by a new native coin, Secret (SCRT) which is used for staking, governance, and transaction fees within the network. The new chain now serves as the consensus layer for the Enigma network replacing Ethereum. It is inflationary, with 10–25% inflation per year depending on the amount of SCRT bonded in the network. Over 20 participating validators jointly agreed on the genesis block of the Enigma blockchain. There is no minimum stake required to participate on the Enigma network, however, network participation is still capped at 50 nodes with the highest stake are active in the network. Full secret contract functionality is not available at launch, but the Enigma core team is continuing to develop this functionality, which will be voted on by the community for inclusion in a hard fork at a later date.
The development team are working to integrate secret contracts to the Enigma chain. This means that every validator performs every secret computation and they achieve consensus on the results. The team plan to propose to the network an inclusion of a WASM-based runtime running inside Trusted Execution Environments (Intel SGX). Read on to find out more valuable details concerning the mainnet launch! We’ve also included some important issues explained by the Enigma team developers for the community and token holders for a better understanding of the recent core developments.
Another major milestone is the settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This clears the way for Enigma’s development team to focus on building groundbreaking privacy solutions that improve the adoption and usability of decentralized technologies. The team promise that more information on all of the above details will be shared over the coming days and weeks.
More news to follow!
Development
Github metrics:
Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):
The Enigma Mainnet Has Launched!
The first Enigma mainnet was successfully launched on February 13th, 2020. This mainnet launch prioritizes stable features, community governance, and decentralization over the inclusion of codebases still in development.
- The first Enigma mainnetis is a proof-of-stake-based blockchain based on Cosmos SDK/Tendermint and secured by a new native coin, Secret (SCRT) which is used for staking, governance, and transaction fees within the network. Its sole purpose is utility within the network. Node operators for Enigma stake SCRT.
- Over 20 participating validators from across the Enigma ecosystem jointly agreed on the genesis block of the Enigma blockchain. These initial validators now govern and operate the Enigma mainnet.
- The new chain now serves as the consensus layer for the Enigma network (replacing Ethereum). This choice preserves Enigma’s ability to support computational privacy for multiple blockchains (including Ethereum) while achieving independence.
- The new chain is inflationary, with 10–25% inflation per year depending on the amount of SCRT bonded in the network. The target bonded rate is 67%. Any changes to this schedule will be proposed through network-wide voting and therefore will depend on the consensus of the majority of staking power in the network.
There is also delegation, slashing, and new elements of on-chain governance. With governance activated, any changes to inflation can be proposed and voted on by the validators supporting the Enigma network.
- There is no minimum stake required to participate on the Enigma network. However, network participation is still capped at 50 workers (nodes). The 50 nodes with the highest stake are active in the network. If you are not among the 50 nodes, you can still participate in network staking by delegating your tokens to one of the 50 active workers.
- Full secret contract functionality is not available at launch, but the Enigma core team is continuing to develop this functionality, which will be voted on by the community for inclusion in a hard fork at a later date. The team work to integrate secret contracts to the Enigma chain. This means that every validator performs every secret computation and they achieve consensus on the results. The team plan to propose to the network an inclusion of a WASM-based runtime running inside Trusted Execution Environments (Intel SGX).Integrating secret contracts enables the protocol to achieve fast consensus (with strong finality — a desired property lacking in PoW chains) and to interoperate with Ethereum and other blockchains. The team plan to shift their focus to achieving interoperability with other blockchains and bringing their privacy solutions to more networks. In this regard, they are exploring contributing to IBC development efforts in the Cosmos ecosystem, as well as continuing their research into other approaches.
- The team and community still actively support the existing Discovery developer testnet, which remains the best tool for developers building their own secret contracts and applications. They work to integrate secret contracts to the Enigma chain.
- The Genesis Game will not occur in its current design. Given the new architectural direction and our desire to create an open and permissionless network, the Genesis Game is no longer necessary. Instead, anyone is now able to set up a staking node on the Enigma network or delegate to an active node, enabling a more open, decentralized, and permissionless ecosystem.
The proposed network economics for Enigma will make the protocol more sustainable and secure. There has also been considerable research done on the instability of fee-only networks and the positive relationship of inflation to protocol security.
This new approach allows the Enigma community to independently focus on their vision to bring privacy solutions to every blockchain, without needing to account for protocol-level changes from an external consensus layer.
For token holders
The team have worked to explore legally compliant avenues for facilitating a token swap between the ERC-20 ENG token and the mainnet SCRT coin. But for the time being, they are not able to proceed with facilitating a swap.
In the coming days, the team and community will release more detailed documentation on how anyone can set up their own node on Enigma’s blockchain. For now, the instructions to run an Enigma node can be found here.
The system requirements now for Enigma nodes
- Importantly, nodes do not require SGX to operate at this early stage. Requirements are similar to other Tendermint-based networks. However, the team would expect this requirement to change as secret contracts are integrated into the network.
- Nodes require 24/7/366 uptime to avoid slashing, and it is recommended that operators set up an Ubuntu server on AWS / GCP / etc. with a public IP. Please consult the public documentation for more information.
- There is no minimum stake required for the Enigma blockchain.
- Slashing on Enigma works similarly to slashing on Cosmos.
For developers
- This is no relevant change for secret contract developers. As secret contract features are proposed and introduced to the SCRT-powered Enigma network, the team plan to release a new devnet for developers that maintains feature parity with the live Enigma network.
- Working with Rust contracts in Discovery is still the best way to develop applications for Enigma.
- The existing Discovery Developer Testnet is still the best place to develop secret contract applications. The SCRT-powered Enigma network is being deployed in phases: first transactions and staking, and then smart contracting functionality. If adding contract programming is voted on and approved by the network, they plan to continue development towards these milestones and build additional developer tooling.
How will the new network interact with Ethereum?
One focus is constructing a bridge to Ethereum as well as other chains. The development team is exploring contributing to the IBC efforts of the Cosmos ecosystem. They plan to propose this bridge after the network votes on and accepts the deployment of secret contracts functionality on the Enigma blockchain.
Social encounters
At EthereumDenver Victor Grau Serrat presented on Enigma and secret contracts.
The Enigma team were present at EthereumDenver!
Finance
Token holders and the number of transactions (information from Etherscan.io)
Enigma MPC has reached a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) related to the issuance of ENG tokens in September 2017. This settlement clears the way for the development team to focus fully on their original and continued vision: building groundbreaking privacy solutions that improve the adoption and usability of decentralized technologies, for the benefit of all.
Some important issues for the community and token holders for a better understanding of the recent core developments
- The team did not give validators anything. All current SCRT poofed into existence when the Genesis block was signed. In the future, any new distributions of SCRT are only possible if validators all agree to mint new SCRT in a decentralized manner. This is what is planned for the community-driven swap, without consensus between current validators a swap is factually NOT possible.
- SCRT has NO value (yet). It is not ENG, ENG must be swapped to be useful for staking and governance on the Enigma protocol.
- Just like other cryptocurrencies, essentially whatever is decided at the genesis is what poofs into existence. All validators had the opportunity to see the parameters and any of them could have refused to sign, ask for adjustments, etc at any time. No one rejected the parameters, no one was forced to sign.
- The enigma team at no point promised me that I would profit from this at any time during the process. There was no ICO, IEO, or any kind of offering. The SCRT tokens that exist today exist because ALL validators agreed on parameters.
- As it stands the enigma team cannot do a swap. Ironically it also seems we would all prefer that they could but the US government will not currently allow it. Even if it hurts the people who have ENG (including myself and other validators).
- The validators want a swap and are working on a compliant way to achieve one independently of the team.
- None of us were entitled to the new governance powers afforded to those who obtain SCRT. With ENG you have no say in the parameters of the network, it was mostly a take it or leave it sort of situation. Once you have SCRT then you will have a real vote to change things including but not limited to inflation, max supply, and use of community pool funds to achieve collective goals.
Roadmap
Defiant — 2020
Defiant brings complete chain-independence. This is just another critical step towards their mission — growing and improving Enigma, scaling the developer community, achieving global adoption, and solving some of the world’s biggest challenges to privacy and true decentralization.
Enigma’s roadmap does not really end in 2020. Enigma is building a foundation for decades of progress. Enigma is the critical missing technology that can allow for truly decentralized applications and useful solutions.
Partnerships and team members
Check out this page on enigma.co to learn more about the experienced team of technologists, researchers and business people.
Social media metrics
Social media activity:
The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Enigma Facebook likes, Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from Coingecko.com
There are so many ways to get involved with Enigma’s ecosystem! You can:
- Read more on the blog
- Develop applications with Enigma
- Become an ecosystem partner
- Join the community and attend live events
- Apply to join the Enigma Collective
- Participate on the Forum or Discord
See also:
Secret Nodes Community Telegram — a community-led group of individuals who care about privacy, data ownership, and are dedicated to supporting secret node runners.
This is not financial advice.
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