What started as an MIT research project, is now a $500 million, top 100 market cap cryptocurrency. Led by Guy Zyskind, and advised by the legendary Alex Pentland, Enigma is a protocol that aims to fix two of the largest problems on blockchains: scalability and privacy.
Keeping data on blockchains can oftentimes be expensive, and is often public. Enigma plans to bring cheap and private data to the blockchain through what they call secret contracts.
What are Secret Contracts?
Secret Contracts are Enigma’s version of smart contracts, where data stored on the blockchain is kept encrypted and private, while still being able to be interacted with.
Nodes on the enigma network are able to prove that computations and processes are done correctly, without revealing the sensitive information that could lie inside.
Enigma’s Role as a Data Marketplace
Enigma also hopes to become a data marketplace. This marketplace will allow its users to monetize any sort of data, while ensuring that the person who owns the data maintains ownership.
Enigma calls this issue data escape. Currently, if a user gives their data, whether its voluntary or not, (looking at you Facebook), it can be resold or used by others to make even more money.
Big data is one of the most valuable things and Enigma will completely change the way it is used. Big Data is also used on Enigma’s first decentralized application (DApp) Catalyst.
What is Enigma’s Catalyst?
Enigma’s Catalyst is a set of tools that allows users to work with Big Data on the blockchain. Catalyst currently operates as a cryptocurrency trading database, that allows users to create bots and other tools from a collection of trading data.
This data is invaluable to hedge funds and is already seeing use days after release. Catalyst supports 90 cryptocurrency exchanges such as Bittrex, Poloniex and Etherdelta.
Trading with real money can be scary, so they have implemented a feature called Paper Trading, where your trading strategies and scripts can be tried in the real world and recorded on “paper”.
How do I Buy Enigma?
Enigma is currently traded with the highest volume on the exchanges Binance and Bittrex. These exchanges operate by trading cryptocurrency pairs, so in order to obtain Enigma with fiat currency, you will need to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum first, and trade it for Enigma. Learn more about this here.
How do I Store Enigma?
Enigma is currently an ERC-20 token, which means it runs on the Ethereum blockchain. The Enigma road map states their own platform should be available between Q3 2018-Q1 2019. When this platform is released a 1:1 exchange of old Enigma to new Engima will take place.
Until this event takes place, it is important to store your Enigma’s securely. This can be done one of two ways, on myEtherWallet or the Ledger Nano S. Currently, Enigma must be added as a custom token in order to be stored on the Ledger Nano S and myEtherWallet.
As Enigma becomes more well known, myEtherWallet might add it as a preloaded token. The myEtherWallet github has a great guide on adding custom tokens.
Masternodes When!?
There is no exact date for Enigma master nodes, but they are currently under development. The amount of coins needed to run a master node are currently not known, but is expected to be around 2,000-10,000 coins.
Master nodes allow large token holders to contribute to the network by using their computer as a server. Expect 20%-50% yearly returns on running a masternode.
If you are interested in keeping up with the Enigma teams success, check out their official subreddit, discord, twitter and telegram.
Disclaimer: These are writer opinions and should not be considered investment advice
Featured Image via enigma.co
