Hello stemians,

In this article I want to put a spotlight on a specific cryptocurrency that recently "blew my mind". The cryptocurrency in question is Enigma (ENG). Although I think the coin itself will see an exponential growth in 2018, but what interests me the most is the technology that Enigma team is trying to bring to the cryptocurrency game.

Aim of the project

Unique technology of Enigma protocol can guarantee privacy to massive amounts of data while still allowing different parties to run computations on it without ever seeing the raw data itself. This makes this project unique and not to be confused with all the privacy coins that mainly aim to hide transactions.

Why do we need Enigma protocol?

Although 2017 was the year of crypto the technology is still far away from massive adoption. This is mainly because of two major bottlenecks - scalability and privacy.

Scalability: On-chain blockchain solutions are not yet scalable and can't handle storing massive amounts of data while maintaining efficiency.

Privacy: With the existing blockchain technology there is still no way to store data in a truly decentralized way. Sensitive data cannot be stored on-chain. As a result, most data must be stored off-chain in centralized databases.

How Enigma (ENG) solves these issues?

Enigma protocol offers a solution compatible with all blockchains with its second-layer, off-chain network. Enigma is combining an on-chain and off-chain solutions to make a hybrid that enables secure, decentralized data computation and exchange, allowing blockchains to truly fulfill their powerful promise.

Enigma is able to guarantee privacy by splitting sensitive data between different nodes. The nodes themselves cannot see the data they compute over yet they can publicly prove that they run a computation correctly. As a result, no single party ever has access to data in its entirety and only the original owner(s) can ever see the raw data. To make this scalable, computations and data storage on Enigma protocol are not replicated by every node in the network, only a small subset perform each computation over different parts of the data.

This ability to run computations on data, without having access to the actual raw data itself is what makes enigma protocol the biggest elephant in the crypto room for 2018. Not only is it extremely useful for every blockchain but it paves the way for big data companies to finally make use of crypto technology.

Team

The team of Enigma is a real eye-catcher. Not only are they a MIT-bred team of experts with impressive careers but theirs advisory board is nothing short of amazing. I was really impressed with the involvement of prof. Alex "Sandy" Pentland. He is one of the most-cited scientists in the world, and Forbes recently declared him one of the "7 most powerful data scientists in the world" along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States. From the recent video AMA, Enigma CEO Guy Zyskind reffered to Sandy as "more than advisor" and as the one who "helped co-found and start Enigma" aswell as that he sees Enigma as "the first possible solution for the issue of data privacy at scale". And remember, this comes from a guy that whole countries listen to when it comes to data privacy.

Furthermore, they recently announced that they are doubling their team in size and as of this writing two new team members with impressive careers have already been added - Lena Kleyner and Isan Rivkin.

EDIT: And the newest addition to the team Avishai Weingarten who prior to Enigma worked on Intel's Predictive Analytics Group on machine learning products. This is a third edition to the team in less than two weeks.

Markets and use cases:

Enigma already has their first real world app on their protocol that is an algorithmic trading library called "Catalyst" which alone can disrupt an important financial data industry with tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue but I'll leave it at that as this beast deserves a whole new article.

Enigma can unlock any idea that requires sensitive data storage (credit card numbers, social security numbers, identity, medical records, etc..).

By their own words they are already speaking to potential partners in these markets:

Data Marketplace for Personal Data ($100bn)

Computations on Genomics Data ($50-$100bn)

Artificial Intelligence on Healthcare Data ($50-$100bn)

Credit assessment / Decentralized lending ($50-$100bn)

Identity ($10-$50bn)

IoT — Machine Data Marketplace ($50-$100bn)

What's in store for Enigma in 2018?

Launch of a mixed on-chain, off-chain truly decentralized data marketplace where people can buy datasets for their algorithms to trade on catalyst or for any data provider to serve data through the enigma data marketplace. And again, the Enigma protocol would give the opportunity for all these players to opt-out anytime from the data marketplace without anyone copying or leaking the raw data itself.
The ability for developers to create decentralized apps on Enigma protocol. Like on ethereum, NEO, etc...
Proof of stake implementation.

Conclusion

For me personally, this project is by far the most ambitious and interesting one to keep eyes on. Although the challenge is tough but having read the white paper and done my research, I strongly believe that the Enigma team can successfully pull it of. And because it will be compatible with any blockchain this is the one project that we should all root for. If successful, it will enable blockchain technology to fulfill its true promise.

Source: All facts come from enigma.co or their whitepaper which I strongly recommend to read.

Disclaimer: As I admire what this project is aiming to achieve, I obviously have a position in it, but by no means take this article as a financial advice. Every investment is a risk and you should do your own research before taking any definite decisions.

You can also find this article on my new page thecryptofanatic.info

Oh, and if you like dropping pennies, I'll catch them here:
ETH/ENG: 0x41c9223d074f14a97C241344B272eE7659138cC0