RE: Tauchain and the privacy question (benefits of secret contracts and private knowledge)
This is the next logical step in Crypto, and i see enermous potential in the Enigma project. Many confuse Enigma with just another private payment crypto, while it is something much bigger than that, private smart contracts will be very attractive for many industries that value the privacy of their data and it seems that their are many other projects that wants to cooperate with ENG. The only thing I wonder is about the token, does holding the token actually do anything, or will it just reflect the value of the project much like normal stocks ? I really like Steem and EOS as you can lock it up to get band width or more influence to further increase your stake, but I haven’t read about ENG and if this token will have some similar function ?
The whole knowledge economy depends in privacy to some degree. How can you monetize your knowledge if a hacker can reach into your mind and steal it before you can broadcast it? On the other hand if the knowledge is distributed across a network and secured by TEE (trusted execution environment) then it's a situation where only you and the machines know.
So the source code you write could remain protected until you unshield it. The code can even be executed while shielded. You can even puzzle encrypt it in theory so that only by spending lots of computation resources can they "mine to open source". I predict "mine to open source" will become a trend.
Thanks a lot for your long and detailed reply. I understand how it functions, and much better now with your explanation, but how will this tie into the value of the Token itself ? What i mean is, once you buy Steem tokens you can do something with them, you can put it in Steem power and thus influence and earn more. But how about Enigma, is the token tied to the technology somehow, or does it just reflect the value of the technology based on what speculators think?
Let's say you and I work together for a month and invent a new compression algorithm. This algorithm is more efficient than any other available. If we release the algorithm everyone can copy it and soon Google(Youtube) and other big companies will simply have a more efficient way of doing things. Worse even still is those big companies may even be able to file a patent before we can.
The value in the community comes from our brain power. The algorithms and everything else comes from what our brains produce. When we look at a token like Steem which has no privacy we also see the token can't hold any value. The brain power is what produces the knowledge in a knowledge economy primarily.
So let's go back to our algorithm example? If we had a way to let the world get the value (benefits) of using our algorithm without actually revealing our algorithm them we could in a sense license the usage of our algorithm. We could for example create a token and only by using this token can the smart contracts (which is encrypted and secretly run in a TEE network) implement our secret algorithm.
This means IP can be protected using TEE/secret contracts. The algorithm remains the shared secret between you and I. Our private keys would protect this shared secret until we decide to reveal it. For even more security and trust we could set it to automatically reveal under certain conditions (conditional privacy) or to reveal if enough mining power is directed to solve the network puzzle, or reveal after a certain period of time (say 2020).
In this way we get the benefits of open source in that we would be able to promise our algorithm will be given to the world after some period of time but we would also be able to exclusively profit from our algorithm until the timer runs out. The token would in essence represent the value of the algorithm itself.
All of this would allow for monetization of knowledge. The secret smart contracts and private algorithms directly monetize the ideas.
Awesome explanation, I understand now how it could be used! May I ask which cryptos you believe the strongest in at the moment, respectively in the forthcoming years ? My biggest investment at the moment is Steem, Bitcoin EOS, bitshares and ENG.
Right now I’m a bit at the crossroads, I believe in Steem, and frankly it’s one of the few projects that is actually materialized and is being used, but with the rise of EOS and rumors of Steemit 2.0, it feels like Steem has lost a bit of its edge, what do you think ?
My opinion on Steem vs Steem 2.0 is that time is running out for Steem original to maintain dominance. In fact I see certain design decisions which could make it easier for a competitor to compete such as the fact that all the account data is public. Quite easy to snapshot the Steem blockchain and create a Steem 2.0 with all the exact same token distributions. Quite easy even for Tauchain or any other project to snapshot the Steem blockchain and sharedrop a token to compete with Steem. The lack of privacy also provides an opportunity for a competitive advantage for any competitor which adds privacy.
I am not yet convinced of EOS. EOS has to compete with Tezos, Cardano, and others. I do not hold EOS at this point in time.
Maybe Steem should think of cooperating with Enigma hehe. It does indeed feel like time is running out a bit. I wonder, if SMTwould have been launched by the beginning of the year, how things would look like today. Another thing I wonder is how long the crypto market will move as a whole, as opposed to projects moving based on their progress and adoption. I guess time will tell.
I suggested that but it was not well received unfortunately. I don't think Steem will ever adopt privacy features due to political objectives of Steemit.inc but I do think witnesses could be convinced someday perhaps.
I more importantly is whether or not Tauchain which seeks to build a decentralized social network makes the decision to have private computations or not. It's a very critical decision which will have to be made for any social network but particularly for Tauchain. I think Steem already made their decision and has to live with the open network and all the problems from that choice.
I think there can always be a compromise of some sort. Me myself I would not mind advertisement on Steemit (some, not too much). It would help to inject capital and raise Steem and thus benefit everyone holding Steem tokens. But I guess advertisement is even a bigger no no for Steemit inc.
As someone who’s primary investment in Steem, I think that’d be great.
I’ve had many concerns regarding Steemit’s weaknesses, and accompanying confusion about how I’d prefer to allocate my investment, when the time comes for Steem 2.0 - unsure of whether to move funds over, how much, etc.
That’d be pretty awesome to be airdropped an amount of tokens proportional to my Steem holdings, and thus have a beginning stake in others, should they be the ones to solve the challenges and win out.
Quite a brilliant idea.
Tauchain and Enigma.
Thanks for the tip :)
Many people ask where to buy Agoras. The problem is it's not widely available on centralized exchanges. The only exchange I know that has it is Bitshares. So if anyone really wants to buy Agoras (AGRS) which is the token of discussion in this post feel free to buy it at: https://openledger.io/market/AGRS_BTC
42 million intermediate tokens total. Current price is: 0.00010700 BTC which is around 70 cents. This is the cheapest price I've seen it in a while because for a long time it was $1.50-$1.30 range.
Thanks for the information ! I Will stack some :)
This theoretical case study / example sums it up rather perfectly.