A Quick Introduction to Secret Network
What is that one shape-shifting feature of blockchain that makes it a defining technology of its era? Most would agree that it is the distributed public ledger. A ledger where everyone could see every transaction happening in real-time. Yet, no one could manipulate them.
Now, think twice. What does that mean to the participants’ privacy? If present on such a blockchain protocol, would you prefer all your transactions to go public, every time you do one?
Secret Network solves this dilemma. It’s the first-ever blockchain network to provide programmable privacy. It helps you to build secret apps. These apps are applications built on the Secret Network that do not permit access. Leveraging encrypted data, they protect privacy even from the nodes.
You must be wondering, how do they do that! Well, they use radically new technologies like trusted execution environments to create provisions for such smart contracts that protect privacy.
Digging Deeper
Although Secret Network follows open-source protocol, it allows inputs, outputs, as well as smart protocols to be encrypted. This approach adds an entirely new dimension to the existing paradigm of blockchain technology. With encryption, you can now preserve privacy during asset transfers or lending. You can share and monetize data without compromising its security. You can use data to extract powerful insights. You can also explore the data to its fullest potential without thinking about the implications, especially in privacy-sensitive fields like healthcare.
Let’s go a bit deeper into Secret Network’s technological foundation, it’s built on Cosmos SDK or Tendermint. What it means is that the network is driven by its own consensus and its own governance. It also has got unique features such as slashing and delegation.
The question that arises next is, how is this network secured? It is secured by the network’s very own coin Secret or SCRT.
What’s the Secret?
Secret Network’s coin SCRT is traded on the Binance exchange. It’s circulating supply is more 55 million with a maximum supply cap of 112 million. The coin is used for transaction fees, staking, and governance. The coin must be staked by validators supporting the network. There are more than thirty active validators on its network.
SCRT is supported by many popular wallets. Ledger, Kepler, Math Wallet — all these wallets support Secret for transactions as well as staking.
Public Milestones on the Secret Network
2020 has been a momentous year for Secret Network. Looking back at the events not only helps to understand the motivations behind Secret Network, but it also helps to get an idea about its future aspirations.
In February 2020, Secret Network launched its first mainnet. At the time of the launch, the mainnet was endorsed by more than twenty independent validators. However, at that time, the name of the network was Enigma Blockchain.
A couple of months after the launch, Enigma Blockchain was unanimously renamed as the Secret Network. With programmable privacy as one of its most ambitious features, and a coin named Secret, the renaming of the network was more of a brand alignment exercise.
The month of June came with a hugely significant update on the technological front. In June 2020, Secret Network completed its code for privacy-preserving smart contracts. The completion of the code always calls for subsequent testing. The tests were carried out in two phases and it involved setting up of incentivized testnets.
The first-phase testnet was capped at 15 participants which included a host of experienced validators. The second phase was more inclusive and larger in size. It involved nearly 80 validators. All these validators utilized the secret contracts and gave their feedback.
With all the research and review outputs, the Secret Network finally launched its unique smart contracts, also known as the Secret contracts, on its mainnet. The date was 15th September 2020.
The Roadmap Ahead
The Secret Network lives in the future. With each passing day, it becomes a bit more technologically advanced and in that advancement rests the imagination for even more advancement.
As recent as in the first week of October, Secret Network launched its own API. We cannot understate the importance of APIs. Its because APIs always prove useful to attract developers and app builders from across the blockchain community.
However, the road ahead is far more exciting than having a native API.
In the days to come, Secret Network aims at building its own ‘Secret’ token standards. They are targeting the issuance of tokens based on smart contracts. The company is also into developing provisions to lock assets on Ethereum. This will be complemented by mint-wrapped privacy tokens. Finally, the company will be implementing Secret Markets AMM built with Secret contracts.
The obvious question to pose here is, what is the company trying to achieve?
With all these efforts implemented together, the Secret Network is planning to alter the rules of the game by putting an end to the problem of “Front Running.”
Putting an End to Front Running: An Ultimate Gamechanger
The front running is a unique problem faced by decentralized exchanges or DEX, as it is popularly known. Since the transactions are open to all on blockchain protocols, users often note the corresponding gas price even before a block is mined. This results in front running attackers inserting a transaction with a higher gas price so that their blocks are mined first.
The native token standards of the network would mean secret transactions. One participant would be able to send Secret tokens to the other without worrying about transactional privacy. Similarly, the swapping of tokens would be protected from front running attacks.
Blockchain technology was always about innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. Who could have imagined that the highly regulated world of finance would become decentralized one day? However, with decentralization came the concern of entirely unprotected transactions. Secret Network brought back balance to the world of DeFi by introducing programmable privacy protocols. In the days to come, it is expected that the network will solve more pressing issues. The benefits that the network will provide to its users would drive it to more adoption and rapid growth.
Staky dashboard and contributions plans
Staky.io recently joines the Secret Network as validators! But who are we? And how we’re planning to benefit the Secret Network?
Staky.io a user-centric staking platform:
First and before anything else, Staky is a staking platform that has been designed to provide our delegators the most advanced staking experience on the market. Here are a few of our features:
- 💻 Dashboard and rewards tracking: our dashboard services will provide you a detailed history of your balances and rewards in order to track all your PoS coins with ease in the same place!
- 🗳 Governance: A good validator is meant to represent its delegators. That’s why we’ll deploy Governance Smart contracts (on compatible ecosystems) in order to allow our users to actively take part in our decisions, our platform will therefore be led by our users!
- 🤖 Telegram bot: It’s often complicated for crypto investors to closely monitor each network proposition or even the rewards, that’s why we’ll deploy a Bot that will keep you personally informed about all your cryptocurrencies network proposal and personal rewards!
Contributions plans
We believe that a good validator is doing more than just securing the network, it has to actively contribute to it. We’re planning to focus our efforts around the education of new Secret dev. we have recently released a project proposition for this purpose:
https://forum.scrt.network/t/grant-request-boost-scrt-builder-adoption-with-secret-buidl-me/2124
Check out platform: https://staky.io
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