Following a relatively long tech update drought, Enigma’s developers have surprised us with a report on recent developments surrounding their unique Secret Nodes and Discovery protocol. The main takeaway from their official blog post is that we can expect to see public access to the source code by the end of March, beginning of April – a huge change for the team and future development of the currency. In addition, users are welcomed to join beta testing of Secret (Genesis) Nodes with the initial number limited to 50, due to a more structured approach to testing and ease of coordination.
What Are Secret (Genesis) Nodes?
Enigma is a very interesting project in the sense that its Genesis Nodes open up the opportunity to handle and manage sensitive data on the blockchain without ever divulging what that information actually is. Secret nodes are able to transmit, manage and process encrypted data, all while maintaining security and privacy. Once properly tested, this will allow many new businesses and even government institutions to apply blockchain technology to their everyday operations.
What is Enigma’s Goal for Genesis Nodes?
While I’m not going to explore the matter in deep technical details, more on which can be found from a previous Enigma blog post, the groundbreaking functionality of Genesis Nodes is enabled by the protocol named Discovery. Thanks to its functionality, Enigma will be able to deploy this piece of code on Ethereum’s blockchain and enable Secret Contracts or Secret dApps. Contrary to what we’re currently familiar with, these smarts contracts will be able to handle sensitive data and make it possible for financial or medical institutions to create their own dedicated solutions, guaranteeing their customers/patients data and ensuring they’ll never be able victims of hacks or data loss.
For the time being, however, trials will remain on Enigma’s test net with a total number of Genesis Nodes limited to 50. This is done as hard forks will be a common occurrence and having a controlled environment will allow developers to manage the update process and discuss changes and proposals more easily and with focused efforts. Also, after extensive research, the team has decided that this number allows for actual decentralization and at the same time, ensures the stability of the network.
Genesis Nodes Requirements
In a nutshell, to become a secret node, you will first need an investment of 25,000 ENG tokens and in addition to that, access to a host that is SGX-enabled and running at least a 6th Gen Intel Skylake processor. A list of compatible hardware and VPS providers can be found on a dedicated GitHub page.