Photo by Fabio

Technology is within arms reach of society. As a civilisation, we arguably take technology for granted, mobile phones have become a gateway to easily access the entire world wide web at our fingertips, GPS watches track our location, our heart rate, whilst bone conduction headphones wirelessly stimulate our brain using short-range radio waves. Online networking through social media has recently become a normality with many kids struggling to connect with life outside of social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, often resulting in many countless hours spent improving our online presence rather than ourselves.

Social media platforms were no doubt an iconic invention for the internet, but it was their ease of accessibility which really pioneered their success. Anonymous chatrooms have been available on mobile handsets since the late 1990’s, but it was the invention of smartphones later on that gave social media a whole new meaning to the user experience. By 2008 we had camera phones with active 3G mobile data along-side the revelation which was titled the Apple App Store, an application which allowed users to download a variety of applications onto their smartphone devices. 10 years on and 180 billion downloads later, the Apple App Store has over 2 million available apps for users of their OS devices, an impressive figure maybe, but not as impressive as the 3.8 million apps currently available on the Google Play store.

So why am I bringing up the past in this day and age?

The enjoyment of social media is changing. We long to keep in touch with friends and family whilst knowing our privacy and personal data are protected, but recent conflictions on platforms such as Facebook have seen us implement fear and lose trust in applications that require personal information. There were times when we would click ‘Accept’ and ‘Skip’ reading the small print, or scroll endlessly without reading any of the T’s & C’s, but I feel that society is starting to really understand patience and the importance of our privacy in a digital age.

Where can modern society place their trust as technology advances? Is there a way our privacy can be safely distributed and no longer subjected to further data breaches? - Yes, there is, and there’s a team of MIT graduates currently doing just that.

Enigma logo

Enigma is looking to change the way we store personal information and protect privacy. Enigma is a decentralised platform which makes sensitive data secure and enables developers to build ‘privacy by design’, end-to-end decentralised applications, without a trusted third party. They are using innovative technology to build the first platform for scalable decentralised applications, serving as a key asset for future individuals and industries. All of this is being built using blockchain technology, a new and revolutionary way of storing digital information.

“A blockchain is a decentralised, distributed and public digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the consensus of the network.” - Wikipedia

Blockchains are held back by fundamental limitations which are essential for mass adoption. Issues with scalability and privacy are values in which many new blockchain startups are looking to address, but what makes the Enigma team unique to other projects? How can we use blockchain technology to store private information and which industries would benefit from this revolutionary new technology?

Blockchain technology uses a protocol called ‘Smart Contracts’ to help verify the negotiation of a contract, however with Enigma, these contracts now become ‘Secret Contracts’, keeping data hidden on the network and personal information safe and secure. Without adding the ability to protect data, blockchains are very limited in utility due to their transparency, but the Enigma team are up to the task of solving the riddle and adding that piece of mind to the blockchain.

“A smart contract is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. Smart contracts allow the performance of credible transactions without third parties.” - Wikipedia

With Enigma’s approach to solving privacy using blockchain technology, industries such as healthcare, genomics and financial sectors would feel confident in researching the technology. These industries would work with the Enigma privacy protocol to maximise their trust and relationships with customers, clients and patients. Individuals would feel a sense of security knowing they can collectively and independently monetise their data, whilst still keeping the information private from third-party companies who wish to exploit such data. This speaks volumes for a protocol which has the potential to massively reconstruct the way we store our personal data online, a revolution in bringing security back to all those who digitally share their personal information.

If you’d like to read a paper written by the co-founder of Enigma, Guy Zyskind, on how Enigma can use blockchain to protect personal data, you can read his acclaimed paper ‘Decentralising Privacy’ here.

Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani

This has the potential to be huge, right?

Of course, but there’s still a long way to go. Blockchain technology is no doubt a revolution, but fundamental limitations need to be addressed before industries invest time and resources into adopting the technology. 2008 saw the birth of blockchain, Bitcoin was then released a year later serving as a peer-to-peer digital currency and independent merchants slowly began accepting the currency as a payment option. 10 years on and there are notably a lot more independent blockchains such as Ethereum and ADA, but we are still very much in the infancy stage of a potential global disruption, not just with data sharing, but also economics.

Enigma is solving real life problems which are happening today. The information we share on social media platforms cannot be exploited again by those who do not have the authority to do so. The EU recently updated their GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) due to the vast increase in technology over recent years. Any company or individual that holds private and confidential information on any EU citizen must comply with the updated regulation released earlier this year. This is enforced to protect companies from sharing and exploiting our data to third parties, but is this enough?

I personally don’t think this is. Over time we will hear of similar stories to the Cambridge Analytic scandal, where the personal information of 87 million users of Facebook was taken without consent and used to influence political campaigns. This isn’t the first time Facebook has been accused of taking private information without consent... Back in 2010 it was discovered that users of their Facebook apps such as Farmville and Texas Hold’em had their personal information shared with third party advertisers. This affected tens of millions of users and resulted in Facebook settling several incidents and 20 years of third party privacy audits.

Enigma and their ‘Secret Contracts’ can change the way we store personal information and provide security to an array of industries. A decentralised blockchain stores information on a ledger which is visible to all, but this isn’t the way secret contracts operate. They solve correctness and privacy by hiding data away from nodes, allowing users to operate in an environment where it’s safe to include personal data. There is a real-world use case for this protocol right now, but scalability must be addressed if millions of users are to rely on the Enigma privacy protocol. This will happen in future years, but patience is needed to successfully implement the protocol on a global scale, adoption will take place but Enigma must build solid foundations and produce a protocol that will provide future privacy for the billions of active online users. This is much needed in what I class as a technology-driven society, but acceptance by major industries needs to be established and Enigma are certainly the team to drive forward innovation and bring privacy back to society.