What is Enigma and how does it work?
Enigma (ENG) is a highly specialised cryptocurrency. The main purpose of the Enigma system is to allow for the analysing and computation of data without that data actually being revealed. For example, if a group of people wanted to work out their average salaries and their exact place in the hierarchy without anyone actually disclosing their individual salaries.
There are two main parts to Enigma.
- The main Enigma ecosystem – Does the above.
- Enigma Catalyst – Is an investment platform that lets developers tap into Enigma’s data marketplace and the main home of the Enigma token.
Note: Enigma ENG is not to be confused with Enigma (XNG). This article is about Enigma ENG.
Where to buy Enigma (ENG)
How does Enigma work?
Enigma and Enigma Catalyst are separate but related projects run by the same team.
Enigma
This is the initial project. It was created for the purposes of letting people run computations on data while keeping the data itself secure and private.
It’s a very specialised function, but with more application than there might initially seem. For example:
- Two businesses want to enter into a partnership and make informed decisions on how best to divide their resources, but don’t want to actually disclose any sensitive commercial information.
- Analysing and studying medical data without the usual risks of accessing and storing confidential information.
- Reducing the chances of corruption, data misuse or growing inequality while facilitating research with sensitive information.
- Letting individuals sell their own sensitive personal information with the confidence of knowing that it’s going to remain private, but can still be used.
- Allowing for a large pool of data for machine learning without the costs and problems associated with accessing confidential information on a large scale.
- Allowing Enigma to become a secure and decentralised data marketplace.
Enigma aims to combine on-chain and off-chain systems to allow for more efficiency. Data is communicated and secured over the blockchain, while computations take place on Enigma’s off-chain system and remaining secured via the blockchain.
It’s intended to be able to connect with existing blockchains and then offload to the off-chain system for processing.
This allows for complex and intensive computations, a wealth of information taken from other blockchains and uncompromising security and reliability.
This will be wrapped up with functionality for developers to create their own decentralised applications to make full use of this data, without any trusted third parties.
Enigma Catalyst
Catalyst is an algorithmic trading tool for cryptocurrency exchanges designed to tap into the Enigma data marketplace.
It’s kind of like the Enigma team created their own application as a demonstration of the potential applications of Enigma and then set about monetising it with the ENG token.
It’s meant to let developers more quickly and easily create their own machine learning trade-bots for cryptocurrency exchanges, with a large pool of data at their disposal.
The ENG token is the main currency of the Catalyst system used to access these opportunities.