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Old "time-tested" adages are peculiar things. "Birds of a feather flock together" contrasts sharply with "opposites attract," yet nary a moment goes by where someone isn't offering one or the other as advice. Adages help make sense of a turbulent world, yet they are often contradictory. Historical adages are no exception:
"Hindsight is 20/20"
tells us the future is impossible to predict accurately, while
"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it"
at the same time admonishes us to indeed predict history from past events.
That statement goes further. It makes it our responsibility to predict the future. Moreso than just a responsibility, I would claim that those visionaries who always seem to be ahead of their time saw it not only as their responsibility, but also as their opportunity to do so.
I side with those who look for opportunity, and I see a big one as we approach the end of this decade and the start of a new one. I'll cut to the chase with two main points:
Cryptocurrencies, the blockchain, and perhaps most importantly, the concept of distributed computing (as popularized lately by concepts such as mining) hold the keys to the next decade in tech and beyond.
Enigma and its secret contracts, as both enablers of private distributed computing and enablers of potential "sidechains" that work hand in hand with existing cryptocurrencies, make Enigma stand poised as a prominent player in the space for years to come.
Bold assertions to make, I know. But as the adage said, history holds the key to future opportunity. I believe that even a cursory glance at the past few decades of computing technology will cement the veracity of these claims. So let's go on a voyage down memory lane.
Enter The 70's and The 80's
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Hardware epitomizes the 70's and the 80's. From Walkmans to VHS players to arcade game consoles, electronics were permeating the fabric of everyday life. Once only the possessions of those nerdy few, electronic devices made their way into consumer hands. The concept of "personal" computers for the home also came around this time, along with the interestingly infamous...but purportedly false prediction about future hardware needs in the home.
The 70s and 80s laid a foundation for all of history that followed. Computing gained momentum, and the world was abuzz with research and development. How would computers change our lives? Was a future with a computer in every home possible? These questions and more spurred the era on to the next stages.
However, as the clock turned into the 90's, a pattern began to emerge. This pattern is crucial in our reasoning about what will come in the 2020's and beyond.
That pattern is this:
I believe history can be read as a series of hardware and software advances, interwoven and built upon each other. Up to present-day, a decade of monumental hardware advance has been followed by a decade whose essence is defined by a concept (enabled by software) that pushed computing forward.
Welcome to the 90s, and the software enabled concept that no discussion about that decade could go without mentioning.
Enter The 90s
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Nothing marked the 90's more than the advent of the internet. Machines, having found increasing ubiquity in the home and the workplace, could now be connected. Instead of only connecting machines locally with physical wires, the internet permitted computers from all over the world to share data. Websites formed and emails now connected the world.
The historical takeaway, as far as our discussion is concerned, is this:
The 90's brought a concept of "remoteness." In other words, data broke away from its close-knit tie to local machines. It asserted itself as something capable of remote transmission and remote computation.
We'll see this pattern again in the cloud of the 2010's, but we now turn to the 2000's, a period of advancement marked most palpably (once again) by its hardware.
The turn of the new millennium! Based on the pattern we've hypothesized, we know that it's about time for hardware advances to be front and center. There were four main advances whose effects still ripple to present-day:
- Storage became cheaper
- CPU speeds increased
- GPU units made their appearance, allowing parallel computation and graphic advances
- Multiple CPU cores became commonplace
Though the first two points are hardware trends that persist through all previous decades, the latter two points are the main unique advancements of the 2000's.
We see once more another decade marked by hardware advancements. A similar pattern emerges as we saw in the 80's and 90's.
Hardware advancement gives rises to a revolution in thinking about the way we use machines.
Once again, there exists a need for some new "concept" that can help us overcome our hardware limitations. We now move to the most interesting point, and the point most crucial to our discussion about cryptocurrencies.
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"The Cloud" exploded in the 2010's. From niche origins, the cloud evolved into an entity with which mobile phone owners and computer users alike could interact with. The cloud represented as much of a paradigm shift as the internet had. It allowed people to back up their data seamlessly and effectively "rent" processing power to run programs remotely. It transcended individual machines by placing responsibility of machine upkeep and service to centralized entities (Amazon, etc). These entities would serve as hosts, controlling and regulating its services.
Remote access and manipulation of data was once again king of the decade.
A sort of counter revolution began its roots in opposition to the cloud as we know it. Key to the concept of the popularized version of the cloud was centralization, a fact that meant some entity ultimately controlled the storage and processing power of the cloud. Arguable problems to the notion of centralization are:
- A single point of failure
- A required trust in the centralized entity
- A dependency on said entity
To combat these problems, the concept of decentralization formed. This concept, along with the partner concept of blockchains, would form the basis for cryptocurrencies as we know them.
The concept of decentralization in computing involves many independent actors contributing their resources toward a task. For example, whereas a centralized cloud would ask one to host their data with them, a decentralized version of this would split data to many participants. These participants have no connection among themselves other than the fact that they are contributors to the network.
In the realm of cryptocurrency, this notion of decentralized, distributed computing comes to life in the form of cryptocurrency mining. As expounded in one of my previous articles, mining allows various decentralized actors to commit their computing power to the network. These actors then seek to solve blocks, which, when solved, are added onto a blockchain along with the transactions that took place on them.
Anyone can become a contributor to a decentralized network. This is both a blessing and a curse.
The blessing is that there is no single source of failure. In an ideal world, this results in no one entity having control over the computing power. Also the network is made stronger since this by definition enables a huge degree of fault tolerance.
However, the potentially bad part about decentralized computing is a BIG one:
How can you guarantee trust over a "trustless" network involving several faceless, independent entities? What if one of them acts maliciously?
In centralized applications there are at least some guarantees of trust.
- There is a single entity to hold responsible should things go wrong.
- That entity is constrained by privacy policies, terms of service agreements, laws, etc. and can be held accountable.
Neither of these hold true for potentially faceless actors. This represents a problem with the application of decentralized computing. How can results be guaranteed to be correct?
Blockchains are used by cryptocurrencies and other applications to solve that problem. Blockchains are driven by consensus. Basically, one entity's actions can be checked by other entities before the result of the first entity's work can be written too deeply onto the blockchain. This checks maliciousness and ensures the results of decentralized computing are correct.
Blockchains thus solve the validity problem of decentralized work. However, the nature of consensus as we know it demands that blockchains be public. In order to validate things, blockchains must be written in a rather immutable and transparent way so that they can be publicly checked. Again, as with most things, while this represents a strength, it also represents a weakness and a limitation.
How can proprietary or otherwise private data utilize the strengths of distributed, decentralized computing if that data is publicly viewable ?
To see widespread adoption, blockchains need a security model capable of handling potentially private or otherwise proprietary data. In other words, actors working on this data need to compute over the data without themselves being exposed to it. This allows computation over blockchains without data disclosure. Furthermore, even data some people don't consider private (such as transaction records, etc) would ideally be able to be obscured somehow for those who do. Enigma fits this bill to a tee.
Enigma's secret contracts "not only solve for correctness, but also for privacy, because they can hide the data completely from the nodes." Computation over private data results in an expansion of the "smart contract" feature many cryptocurrencies are being developed with. This unlocks the potential of distributed computing in the following ways:
- It expands the number of potential users of the blockchain (bringing in the whole sector of organizations dealing with sensitive data).
- Through the above point, it may potentially ripple through the industry, encouraging growth of decentralized applications as a whole.
- It moves us toward a fully decentralized world by potentially disrupting the centralized stranglehold by allowing even more security than would be available with them.
Decentralized computing could be as revolutionary as the cloud. It expands markets. Its increases potential clientele to include people who may not be able to access some centralized solutions. It reduces dependence on centralized entities and distributes power over several actors.
Enigma facilitates a decentralized world, solving the remaining problem of privacy and security when it comes to distributed computing.
In the overview of computing history, we saw the journey from independent machines to interconnected ones. This trend won't be going away anytime soon. Distributed computing transforms the landscape by bringing computers together to work toward common goals. These computers form a network of independent actors no longer regulated or constrained by a centralized authority.
Technologies like Enigma and its secret contracts will prove vital toward a decentralized, connected future. By offering protections over the data it encompasses without giving up on the benefits of the blockchain, Enigma's secret contracts ensure security and therefore promote the scaling of blockchain applications. This will enable more and more data to be placed over distributed networks with confidence, and will spur us into the next decade of history and beyond. A decade of fast, secure, distributed computing.
To learn more about Enigma, please visit https://enigma.co/