



State-based justice systems are inefficient, costly, cruel, adversarial, and counterproductive. Market justice, where allowed, provides civilized solutions. Smart contracts, combined with Enigma's Secret Store protocol, enable private justice markets to thrive regardless of geographic monopolies.





We live in exciting times!

Imagine being able to buy anything without having to do any research on the product, service, or seller, or being able to sell without having to worry about receiving payment on time. Even better, imagine not having to ask anyone's permission to provide or receive a good or service, or having anyone snooping around digitally, stealing information about your transactions, or stealing your identity - all without a middle man.

The former is already possible through the same blockchain technology that powers the Bitcoin ecosystem, and the newer smart contract technology provided by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Enigma will soon make anonymous, decentralized smart contracts possible through its "Secret Store" protocol.

Today it is possible to design self-executing and self-enforcing smart contracts. A buyer and seller can put down an automated escrow deposit which is released after a predetermined time and/or when both parties are completely satisfied. The escrow can be extended to any time length agreed in order to serve as an extended product/service guarantee. Escrowed contracts can also be used for extended service agreements such as loans, utility agreements, or fractional infrastructure use and/or ownership. Buyer and seller don't need to know anything about each other.

In the event that one of the parties is dissatisfied, the escrow release formula can be renegotiated through live smart contract redrawing within predetermined parameters in the original contract. If no revised settlement can be reached, the escrow automatically goes to arbitration. The arbitrator selection process can be written into the original contract, and follow standard arbitration selection format such as that of AAA (the American Arbitration Association) - which puts today's state penal-based systems to shame. No third party enters the picture until and unless an actual dispute arises.





Subrogation contracts can also be written, that allow claimants who have had their property lost or damaged (or have been personaly injured) to sell their right to restitution for the best price in a competitive subrogation market - or to simply select whichever subrogator they like best - in order to get their property returned or fixed. Witnesses can anonymously report incidents without fear. Investigators, bonding agencies, financiers, arbitrators, surveillance companies, collection agencies, even employment agencies can all partcipate anonymously in the processes involved in restitution and recoupment - each through a separate escrow fund.

Restitution Transfer and Recoupment (RTR) is a method of converting losses or damages attributable to an outside party, and costs associated with recoupment, into restitution and restitution finance payments. It is composed of the following steps:

Rights Transfer

Debt Assignment

Containment

Payment Negotiation

Supervision

Final Settlement





Now victims can be made whole again - without insurance or expensive lawyers and politicians. And there is no need for victims to have to pay for their own restoration, when they have already suffered. This is a far cry from the centralized, state-based legal systems of today in which no one gets anything back. In fact, if victims are lucky, they will see offenders tortured in penal institutions for a while. Instead of the case being settled, debts repaid, and peace restored, the victim is never completely satisfied, and the debtor becomes more professional at "criminality". With conventional justice systems, both parties remain enemies.

But why is this evolution not already happening? What is preventing this breakthrough technology from being implemented, when the faults of the current political/legal system are so glaring, and the advantages of fixing it are so clear? The plain answer is its current lack of privacy.

Much of the information in any contract, and especially one that involves disputing parties, is sensitive. The nature of current smart contracts requires that they be fully transparent. And that's just the contract layer. Unlike standard contracts, which are only visible to the contracting parties, current smart contracts are visible to anyone. It's a tradeoff between immutibility, decentralization, and verifiability, on the one hand, and security of privacy on the other.

The primary obstacle to implementing innovative legal systems - and coding them into smart contracts - is the fact that the custodians of centralized justice systems are understandably reluctant to part with the positions of power that maintain them in these positions. It's a question of job security. Legal competition would quickly put dictators out of business. So they simply punish their competitors - if they can find them.

Innovative systems of commerce in general, competing currencies, and, most of all, a competitive justice market, could quickly bring down any tyranny - if only we mere mortals, who seek to implement them, could escape Caeser's wrath.

Enter Enigma's Secret Contracts.





Enigma enables secure transactions through a secure computation protocol which allows computation over encripted data. Enigma's secret contracts protocol creates a trusted execution environment (TEE) and multi-party computation (MPC), in which the transaction and its details is only visible to those authorized by the contract. The code is run encrypted.

The express purpose of state-based regulation of ICOs and smart contract development in general is consumer safety. The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange breech, and many other security incidents have given politicians plenty of ammo, which is directed squarely against the crypto market in general. The Enigma technology will allow the creation of bulletproof smart contracts with consumer safety that puts statutory regulatory mechanisms to shame.

Experimentation and competition allows the cream to rise to the top much faster, encouraging rapid prototyping of legal systems and forms of settlement for disputes and violations.

If regulators are honest and truthful, they will wholeheartedly encourage the rapid development of encrypted smart contract technology.

Don't count on it.

More likely, politicians will continue slowing the industry at every turn - and, in some cases, even prohibiting it.

You can rest assured that every time the fledgeling smart contracts industry stumbles, the "regulators" will wave their flag in front of the general public, who, for the most part, have no concept of smart contracts and cryptocurrency. It's an ancient game of intellectual monopoly that's been around since before the pharoah-gods of old.

Enigma will provide much better security for investors by allowing experimentation and markets in dispute resolution to operate independent of geography. Not only can buyers and sellers operate freely and experiment with unconventional selling tools without having to wait for permission, but they will be able to choose and design legal venues and entire legal systems to their hearts' content, along with subrogation formats - all out of the reach of greedy, power-hungry politicians.





Enigma, an end-to-end anonymizing protocol, is clearly a necessity in the quest for honest, trustless commerce and dispute resolution to back it up. Without the ability to shop, contract, bank, archive, learn, leak, or otherwise participate in any online activity securely, smart contracts are little more than a novelty, whose participants can be quickly shut down at the whim of the powerful.

In summary, today's smart contracts are necessarily transparent in order for data to be verifiable. This transparency, however, is a weak link in any transaction that requires privacy, making them vulnerable to all sorts of malicious attacks. Enigma resolves this dilemma by encapsulating the contract in a security shell, so that access is strictly controlled by the parties involved and whomever they choose to represent them, under what conditions they are represented, and the forum within which any dispute is settled - without having the rules and rulers assigned by some foreign entity.

Enigma's Secret Contracts protocol is the key to a truly trustless marketplace, and will power automated enforcement mechanisms that will guarantee honest trade on a global scale among strangers and obviate the need for geographically-based legal systems.