About

Enigma is a privacy protocol that aims to enable private and scalable computation on data without revealing the data itself.

History

Enigma is attempting to solve both privacy and scalability issues of existing blockchains. The protocol originated from CEO Guy Zyskind’s research at MIT in 2015. Enigma acts as a second layer on top of existing blockchains, allowing for computationally intensive or private tasks to be transferred off-chain. Using this structure, nodes can prove they have completed a task without a need to see the underlying data. The team believes this will enable a type of smart contracts where data remains encrypted called “secret contracts.”

The team believes that a range of use cases can emerge from the protocol including medical research and the ability to prove specific details like creditworthiness or age, without needing to reveal underlying specifics. Because privacy is enforced through a variety of mechanisms, including client-side encryption and distributed off-chain computing, details of individuals are never exposed.

The network uses three layers; a protocol layer for private data computation, a platform layer that enables the creation of data sharing marketplaces, and an application layer where decentralized applications are built.

Currently, the platform layer is focused on the Enigma Data Marketplace, which is a smart contract based decentralized infrastructure for buying and selling datasets. Information is stored off-chain by providers and can be purchased using the Enigma (ENG) token. The goal is to eventually allow anyone, including individual users, to offer data through the platform in return for tokens.

The first application built on Enigma was Catalyst, an algorithmic trading library for cryptoassets. The application allows users to backtest and analyze trading strategies to gain insight into performance. Catalyst links to the data marketplace, where traders can subscribe to datasets contributed by Enigma and third-party data providers. Traders use ENG tokens to pay for dataset subscriptions, and data providers receive ENG in return for making their data available.