Privacy-focused Secret Network (SCRT) has been one of the few outliers during a multi-month market-wide correction, currently up 111% in the last 30 days.
Secret Network is a delegated proof-of-stake blockchain that supports an ecosystem of secrecy-preserving decentralized applications (dapps). Part of the ecosystem includes a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol called Secret Swap which features a defense mechanism against front-running.
The project aims to combine Ethereum’s smart contracts, Monero’s privacy, and Cosmos’ interoperability and scalability.
“Secret Network improves upon traditional smart contracts by supporting encrypted inputs, encrypted outputs, and encrypted state for smart contracts – data privacy for sensitive information stored on the blockchain.”
Secret Network recently announced a $400 million fundraising round from investors like DeFiance Capital, Alameda Research, CoinFund, and HashKey.
Image via Shutterstock
Arthur Cheong, CEO at DeFiance capital referred to Secret Network as “the only privacy-by-default smart contract blockchain,” with “groundbreaking technologies like front-run resistant DEXes, Secret NFTs and more.”
“The Secret team has been relentless in working towards their mission since Enigma and we think that the ecosystem is now ready to tackle the next phase of growth.”
Brian Lee, partner at Alameda Research, said that Secret Network was a “first mover” and market leader in solving privacy issues for Web3 applications.
According to the announcement, $225 million was acquired for the purpose of expanding the network’s application layer, and another $175 has been allocated to an accelerator pool, which aims to “provide non-dilutive capital, grants, and ecosystem incentives to rapidly expand user adoption.”
Secret Network is joining a controversial sector of the crypto markets. While many crypto investors take privacy seriously, some see a distinction between it and anonymity. Privacy coins are also under the scope of authorities. The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently offered a hefty cash reward for anyone who could crack Monero (XMR), the ‘OG’ of privacy cryptos.
“IRS-CI (Criminal Investigation) is seeking a solution with one or more Contractors to provide innovative solutions for tracing and attribution of privacy coins and Layer 2 off-chain transactions, such as expert tools, data, source code, algorithms, and software development services to assist their Cyber Crimes agents in carrying out their mission as it relates to cryptocurrency privacy technologies. These should support one of the outlined initiatives on Monero or Layer 2 network protocol transactions, or other cryptocurrency obfuscation technologies.”
