Hello to the Enigma community! With 2018 behind us, it’s time for a look back at a year of successes — and a look forward at a very exciting 2019.

In this post, we will look at Enigma’s accomplishments from the past year, some of our best media coverage and blog articles, and pictures from our travels as we evangelized and educated about decentralized privacy solutions. Then we’ll look at our big year ahead — the highly anticipated launch of our Discovery network on testnet and mainnet, the growth of “secret nodes,” and how we’ll be significantly increasing our focus on education, marketing, and developer relations in 2019.

When Enigma began in 2015 at the MIT Media Lab, it was just ideas in our whitepapers. In 2019, we’re proud to say Enigma is becoming a network. Discovery is just the first iteration of what we believe will become the privacy layer for the decentralized web. And with the launch of our public network, we are continuing to live the MIT Media Lab ethos: “deploy or die.”

Enigma is a foundational protocol for privacy-preserving computation. Need to catch up on what Enigma is building and solving? Want to learn more about our approach to privacy and decentralization? Check out the Enigma Table of Contents — or watch this short video.

2018 — Building the Foundation

In 2017, much of Enigma’s focus was on completing our token sale and building a global community. By any metric these efforts were successful, with $45M being contributed by over 5,000 individuals in dozens of countries in three hours.

Enigma’s purpose, however, is not fundraising — it is building. And as 2018 began, our team was extremely excited to fully turn our focus to growing our project and creating our protocol.

Growing Enigma

From a development standpoint, Enigma had an incredible year. We launched the Enigma Data Marketplace in the first quarter of 2018, followed by the launch of our first testnet in June — both on track with our initial roadmap. We also released multiple tutorials and walkthroughs to help developers get started with secret contracts, as well as significant protocol documentation. In September, we expanded our roadmap to include additional critical functionality in our Discovery release.

We’ve made great progress since the release of our first testnet, including the release of simulation mode for developers looking to test secret contracts. You can read our November development update here that discusses our move to WASM, stateful secret contracts, private outputs, and more. This past month we’ve focused on finalizing critical aspects of Discovery, including gas metering and contract syntax. We hope to make some longer blog posts soon about our development work, but we’re focusing hard on the code for now!

Our amazing development team has been working constantly and collaboratively, and we are excited to show you the results of their labor!

Our current protocol documentation — currently being overhauled for Discovery!

*** UPDATE as of 10/9/19: Please see the New Documentation ***

We also began working with a number of exciting projects and companies in 2018 to expand adoption of Enigma’s privacy solutions. In June we revealed our collaboration with Intel, which was announced by Intel VP Rick Echevarria on stage in Tel Aviv. We also participated in Intel’s Ingenuity Partner Program. We continue to work closely with Intel on SGX-based solutions and look forward to expanding our collaboration in 2019. Earlier in the year, we also began working with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and Decentralized Identity Foundation, exploring more ways to meaningfully expand adoption of decentralized technologies.

In August we were proud to announce eight launch partners that would be building with secret contracts. These partners are looking at many different use cases for Enigma, such as private voting, sybil prevention, secret auctions, decentralized credit, and more. Our partners continue to work with our code and are looking forward to the release of Discovery on testnet and mainnet. We’re also continuing to talk with new partners daily who are eager to try out secret contracts for themselves and integrate them into their own products!

If you’re looking into building your own solutions with Enigma, we encourage you to read through our Solutions Series to discover just some of the ways Enigma can be used in decentralized applications and platforms. You can always get in touch with our team to tell us what you’re building, or post in our developers forum!

One of our proudest accomplishments this year was expanding the incredible Enigma team. We now have over a dozen incredible developers, researchers, and businesspeople working on Enigma in the US and Israel, all deeply passionate. We have one of the most experienced and committed teams in the decentralization space. You can read more about our team on the Enigma blog — or if you’re interested in joining us, look at our open roles!

2018 also marked the launch of the Enigma Ambassadors Program. This allows community members who are passionate about privacy to get more intimately involved with our project. Ambassadors are educators and advocates who are focused on growing adoption and understanding of next-generation privacy solutions — and Enigma’s core team works directly with Ambassadors to help them achieve their mission. Ambassadors have supported every single Enigma accomplishment this year, from our protocol documentation to our business development initiatives, from our visual branding to our podcast.

In 2019, we strongly encourage you to consider joining this program and becoming part of a global network of pioneering privacy advocates. With over 50 Ambassadors in 15 countries, we have built what we believe is one of the best core communities in the decentralization space — humble, supportive, passionate, and committed to building a better future. At Enigma, privacy is our cause. Come make it yours.

Apply here!

Enigma Around the World

While for most of 2018 we were heads-down developing our protocol, we did make some time to attend major industry conferences, work with developers, present some of our code, and meet many of the amazing members of the Enigma community.

In May, we attended Consensus NYC and presented the first live look at secret contracts. We also hosted a joint meetup with our friends at Zilliqa. During the conference, we were fortunate enough to have Ran Neu-Ner’s team at CNBC follow us in New York and document our experiences. Here is the resulting video!

Pictured: Enigma co-founder Can Kisagun explaining secret contracts.

In July, the Enigma team visited Europe and participated in a couple of great events. First was a meetup in Berlin with Ocean Protocol and Polkadot, where we were thrilled to be able to meet multiple Enigma Ambassadors in person. We then traveled to the Techcrunch conference in Zug, Switzerland, where Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin presented and our CEO Guy Zyskind spoke on a panel about self-sovereign identity.

Head of Growth Tor Bair (middle) with Ambassadors Nick and Marcel in Berlin!

In October, we returned to Europe for two more awesome events — Web3 Summit and Devcon 4. You can read a full trip report on the Enigma blog, including pictures and video from our meetup with Ocean Protocol and Chainlink.

As Discovery launch approaches, we look forward to many more awesome events and meetups in 2019. Our focus at Enigma is always on creating and attending collaborative developer-focused events. We don’t really have a taste for expensive conference booths or lambo races. We’ve always gotten the most value from talking directly with builders of decentralized systems and applications and learning how Enigma can better serve their needs. If you’re organizing a conference or event this year and would like a member of the Enigma team to speak or present on privacy, secret contracts, or decentralization, we’re interested! Contact us: info AT enigma DOT co

We’ve already had one great conference so far in 2019, with Guy speaking at the Israel Bitcoin Summit about “Blockchain Beyond the Hype.” Here’s to a year of moving beyond hype and showing the world the power of privacy and decentralization!

Guy Zyskind (third from left) speaks at the Israel Bitcoin Summit.

Enigma in the Media

Last year we were fortunate enough to have multiple opportunities to speak publicly about our work at Enigma as well as the importance of decentralization and data privacy. Here is a brief collection of articles, videos, and media appearances from the past year.

In the second half of 2018 we launched Enigma’s podcast, Decentralize This! We’ve now hosted over 15 guests — some of the most successful and intelligent builders and thinkers in our space, all interested in what it will really take to scale decentralized technologies. We’re really excited about this initiative and look forward to expanding our own media platforms in 2019!

Please listen to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and Soundcloud, and check out our most-listened and most-recommended episodes below! If you have been looking for a show that explores the greater purpose and meaning of decentralization — not speculation, markets, or technical details — then Decentralize This! is for you. Read our episode list here.

As Discovery launches in 2019, we plan to be much more active in terms of media appearances, press outreach, and building public awareness of data privacy challenges and decentralized solutions. Privacy is one of the most critical issues facing the web and our society — and Enigma intends to take a leading role in creating and scaling real solutions. If you’re interested in covering Enigma on your publication, blog, podcast, or other platform, we’d be happy to speak with you. Contact us: info AT enigma DOT co

You can read our first op-ed from 2019 here!