Enigma Secret Nodes: What They Are and Their Role in the Network

Familiar with the Enigma project? Are you aware of its recently implemented feature, called Secret nodes? In fact, it’s an amazing improvement, we would love to share in a few words. Let’s first give you a background of the Enigma project to proceed with the topic’s core.

The world of Enigma

Facing the blockchain’s characteristics such as scalability and privacy, Enigma project aims to fulfil the picture, supporting the decentralization ideology. Enigma’s protocol is the very first enabling processes with sensitive data. Some time ago, the project presented the Secret Contacts, which are kind of smart contracts, using inputs, which are encrypted. This leads to avoid revealing any data to the participants in the computation process. In a word, this means that Enigma nodes are operating with information by keeping it in a secret even for themselves. This is what we call Secret Node.

illustration of the enigma project

Why choose the Enigma secret?

When it comes to privacy, Enigma isn’t just working with sensitive information, but also deliver users a better experience by its Secret Contracts. The Enigma team welcomes cooperating with any other blockchains interested to reuse their unique technology. This is simply a decentralized revolution of a contemporary technology.

Stakeholders in the ENG network

There are several main types of stakeholders. Except the newly adopted Secret Nodes, we observe also Consensus Nodes, Developers and dApp users. Having on mind, Enigma is an open code project, basically, anyone can contribute to the network by becoming a node. It’s using the Proof-of-Stake mechanism when choosing a worker. This makes the chance of being selected proportional to the number of tokens in a possession by the node. Anyway, it’s a simple rule – the bigger collateral you have, the higher the chance is to run the next Secret contract. The last-mentioned minimum amount to lock is expected to decrease when the number of nodes in the network raises. Details are still not released.

visual of the network of enigma nodes

Purpose of the ENG token

The main role of the ENG token in Enigma’s network is paying for computations, just like Ethereum is exchanges via Gas. In brief, if you want to run a Secret contract, you have to spend some ENG to assure its privacy. In particular, there’s another supportive function of the ENG regarding the staking system. The more tokens a node is likely to spend, the higher the chance is to participate in the next contract. This is how nodes earn a return on their stakes.

Bottom line

Secret nodes are a crucial part of Enigma’s network. If you’re interested to set up one, some more information will be published later on in the project’s social media channels and blog.