Recap: Enigma Open Community Call — January 2020
By: James Waugh
Tags: Community, Smart Contracts, Ethereum, Blockchain, Privacy

Thanks to everyone who asked questions! It’s really, really helpful. Here is a what you asked, along with our answers:

From Ian of SecretNodes.org: Are there any other details you can give regarding the multi-worker setting?

Not at this point. It is a huge architectural change. There are two aspects, and one is more scientific in terms of what it means for incentives and consensus. Also, there is an engineering challenge of actually plugging it into the system. We have not begun to explore it in detail.

Is test ENG available to anyone who is running a node?

We did a snapshot in 2019 of ENG holdings, and tENG is being distributed based on those holdings. If you’re interested in running a test node, please reach out via the dev forum and we can help you get involved. Our plan is to create a tENG faucet in order to allow people to use Salad on testnet. Learn more in our comprehensive blog post about Secret Nodes:

Will the Salad mixer integrate with other wallets?

Yes! One of the goals of our initial work integrating with MEW and MetaMask is to streamline that process. We are developing a guide for anyone building or maintaining a wallet. Another exciting step will be to integrate with other types of applications. We also plan to launch with a standalone interface, so everyone can learn which gets the most traction, which is easiest for users, and which contributes the most liquidity in the mixer because that improves privacy overall.

How does remote attestation work in the Enigma Network?

Essentially, it currently involves two steps:

registration ~ involves contacting Intel servers (only happens once) after registration ~ only touches the Enigma network

When launching a worker to be registered in the Enigma network, the worker uses Intel’s APIs inside of the processor/enclave to generate a new key that is wrapped in a quote (signed proof that Intel can attest that your node is a genuine SGX enclave). At this point, a report is delivered to the Enigma contract, where it is verified on Ethereum. It validates our code properly generated a new key and there is a valid attestation.

Going forward, the remote attestation process is very different. Now, any operation performed by the worker doesn’t need to involve anything. Instead, our contract on Ethereum will make sure that every interaction is properly signed by the generated key. Because this key was generated inside of an enclave, we know it can’t be tampered with.

Are you in contact with any companies or developers at companies who are interested in building on the Enigma testnet?

There are many interesting use cases and collaboration ideas! Within the public blockchain ecosystem, there are certain access control use cases that we have seen. 2key is a company with whom we are scoping out digital rights management. Also, we have been exploring possible Salad integrations with DeFi applications. Recently, our team had productive conversations with Bloom and ConsenSys Health. More info will be available in due time.

How did you make the determination to work with Ethereum? Are you planning for Enigma to work with other smart contract platforms?

Deciding to focus on Ethereum was an obvious choice because most of the development ecosystem in public blockchains revolves around Ethereum. As for other platforms, we have started exploring interoperability projects like Cosmos and Polkadot.

[48:23–END] Calls to Action!

There are so many ways to get involved with Enigma’s ecosystem! You can:

Stay tuned for additional updates on Genesis Game and mainnet!