Introduction
Enigma is a privacy protocol developed to solve scalability and privacy; which are specific issues to the public blockchains. Most public blockchains are transparent, and sensitive data cannot be stored as it can be viewed by anyone. As for scalability, blockchain computing is too expensive and slow, which makes it unfeasible to store large chunks of data.
Enigma is able to tackle both issues with unique technology. Enigma transforms 'smart contracts' in other blockchains into 'secret contracts' on Enigma.
These 'secret contracts' will have coding that is partially executed on the public blockchain and partially executed on Enigma's decentralized off-chain privacy computation network. Enigma is blockchain agnostic, which means that any blockchains can run the Enigma Protocol on top of their existing blockchain.
Enigma's off-chain computation network will consist of a series of peer-to-peer nodes all capable of running sMPC (secure multi-party computation) computations. Like other projects using PoS consensus algorithms, anyone are able to join as an sMPC node as long as it stakes ENG on the public blockchain. The blockchain will assign 'secret contracts' jobs among the sMPC nodes. Any malicious behavior will result in the staked ENG tokens being confiscated and redistributed to the other nodes.
Catalyst
The first application built using Enigma Protocol is Catalyst. The platform targets professional cryptocurrency traders with its data-driven cryptocurrency research and investing. Catalyst gives users the power to curate as well as share data to create profitable data-driven investment strategies.
Catalyst is an algorithmic trading library for crypto-assets written in Python. It allows trading strategies to be easily expressed and back-tested against historical data (with daily and minute resolution), providing analytics and insights regarding a particular strategy’s performance.
Team
The core team of Enigma comprises of experts from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The team is highly technical, and primarily composed of highly experienced software engineers. More information of the team can be found here.
Partnerships
Enigma has plenty of partnerships, including those with AION, Kyber, Endor, Investfeed, Ether Delta, NepolionX, ETHLend, and Nebula Genomics. Enigma’s partnership with ETHLend is especially exciting because they are putting their ability to provide privacy into action. ETHLend is a decentralized lending marketplace and Enigma is working with them to protect credit data to provide security and privacy for users of the ETHLend dApp. ETHLend users will also be able to use Enigma/Catalyst to devise management strategies and make better financial decisions, thus expanding the ETHLend lending ecosystem.
Another interesting partnership is with AION, where Enigma is again privatizing the data for AION so that the AION multi-tier blockchain network can enable users to process sensitive data.
Roadmap
More information about the roadmap can be found from https://blog.enigma.co/enigmas-ambition-our-latest-roadmap-8d50107ad314.
Concerns about the project
The team has pivoted the project multiple times since ICO. After working half-way on Catalyst with its token called ECAT, the team decided to pivot Enigma to a decentralized data storage platform and a data marketplace with the token renamed to ENG. Currently, Enigma is pivoted towards a privacy-focused smart contracts platform.
The scope of the Enigma project is very large and there are many risk factors, both internal and external, that can hurt its trajectory such as the design and implementation of Enigma's public blockchain, their secret contract VM, as well as the blockchain's economics.
Conclusion
With the very ambitious scope of the project and ample runway with a roadmap that stretches till 2020, the team in Enigma have time on their side to be successful. With its highly technical team, it is likely that Enigma will succeed in the long-run, while it will be hard to tell where it is going in the short-run.
Price per coin: $2.70
Market Cap: ~$200 million
Circulating Supply: 74,836,171 ENG
Total Supply: 150,000,000 ENG
With Enigma's potential being immense and game-changing, its current valuation of $200 million, or $2.70 per coin, seems moderately undervalued, with its ATH reaching $8. Given its durable roadmap, Enigma will likely be a good long-term hold of at least 2 to 3 years.
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References:
https://blockonomi.com/enigma-guide/
https://www.tokendaily.co/blog/a-deep-dive-into-enigma
https://coindigo.io/coin-reviews/enigma-privacy-scalability-crypto-kind/