Enigma (ENG): Monero-strength privacy for every blockchain - This could be a big one

Enigma (ENG) is a privacy protocol that will enable the highest level of privacy for any blockchain. This blockchain protocol will allow, for example, Ethereum transactions to become completely private in a way that rivals or even bests Monero's privacy level.

PRIVACY FOR ANY BLOCKCHAIN

Right now Monero is known as the most private and anonymous cryptocurrency, and for that reason it is highly valuable. There is however a new player on the block: Enigma (ENG). Enigma isn't a currency as such, but rather a protocol that can be used by other cryptocurrencies. You could send pretty much any cryptocurrency through Enigma and it would anonymize the transaction and make it invisible to the outside world. With Enigma cryptocurrency holders no longer need a seperate coin like Monero to hide their assets in, but they can just get the same amount of privacy in the other cryptocurrencies.

In fact, it allows for private decentralized trading as well through a DEX, which they are planning on building as well.

BETTER THAN MONERO?

While Monero offers great privacy for transactions, it's still only a currency based crypto. If you're using ETH or NEO, your best hope is waiting for zksnarks or something similar. But these have limitations in cost, speed and computational power. A transaction is easy enough, but a privaty computation on the blockchain is a different story.

Enigma fixes this issue and could be seen as an add-on to pretty much every blockchain. If Monero is a privacy version of Bitcoin, then Enigma is a privacy feature for platforms like Ethereum. Enigma makes even the contents of the computation invisible to the outside viewer, not just the transaction.

CATALYST

It gets a bit confusing, because blockchain privacy doesn't seem to be their primary focus but rather a side-focus to complement their main vision of creating a decentralized trading platform and data marketplace that guarantees users' privacy through the underlying privacy protocol. They essentially want to create a professional-level trading platform where users' trades are hidden from plain sight, as large traders and investors will likely wan.

They will compete with services like ICONOMI and Melonport in offering a sort of 'hedge fund' feature for creating decentralized investment funds.

THE TOKEN

The ENG tokens are the native currency of the ecosystem and will be used to:

• Reward the most succesful traders on the platform
• Pay for premium data sources
• Pay for the fee to invest in hedge funds
• Reward liquidity providers on the DEX

The token is a true utility token. There will be no dividends or profit-sharing features to the token.

THE TEAM

Enigma has a very strong team with a lot of backgrounds in MIT and McKinsey, with the Director of the prestigious MIT Media Lab as one of the advisors to the team, among others.

I bought a few ENG just before new year's when I discovered it, but I hadn't done my research yet. I sold for a small profit, but now that I've read some more into this project and the chart looks to be about ready I just re-bought my way back in to ride this wave a little longer. At a $450 million market cap I feel there is still some growth left to be had in this one: $1 billion is not impossible, but I would settle for a nice 50% gain as well.

If you're not fully convinced yet about Enigma, have a look at this helpful video I found by CryptoFuture:

I wouldn't recommend going all-in in this one, but it's a nice one to add to your portfolio and there is a lot of hype and belief building up surrounding this one. It just had a pretty big rise, so we might go down first before we go up.. but it looks pretty stabilized to me. As long as BTC remains calm, I see good signs ahead.

Click here to visit the Enigma website

(Art by Roy Lichtenstein)