Enigma is a crypto platform that’s trying to solve the problem of privacy on the blockchain by giving them access to much-needed storage, privacy, and scalability. Enigma wants to extend Ethereum Smart Contracts by introducing secret contracts, a brand of smart contract that gives users an element of privacy that’s not intrinsic to current blockchain protocols. These contracts operate off-chain, meaning the execution of the Smart Contract doesn’t occur on the Ethereum blockchain itself. This is how the Enigma protocol works: it breaks up the Smart Contract and any related data into pieces, encrypts those pieces, and distributes them redundantly among Enigma nodes. Enigma has a protocol level. The Enigma privacy protocol allows for decentralized computation of sensitive data. It has a platform layer too. On this protocol, dozens of platforms such as data marketplaces and AI exchanges can be built. In its application layer, it enables thousands of truly decentralized apps that require private computation and secure data.Its first application is catalyst. Catalyst is the first application to be built on the Enigma protocol, already active with tens of thousands of users. Catalyst is a revolutionary platform for data-driven cryptoasset investing and research, built for professional crypto traders. Enigma has a team of MIT graduates, and they’ve been working diligently to ensure Enigma’s success. Guy Zyskind, Enigma’s CEO and cofounder, helped start the project while he was still a student at MIT. He has more than a decade of software development experience with an M.S. from MIT. Sandy Pentland, a well known MIT data scientist who gained fame for his work in data-mining social interactions, is Zyskind and Nathan’s adviser on Enigma. With other advisors such as Alex Pentland, who sits on the Advisory Boards for Google and Nissan, CEO of Abra, Bill Barhydt and director of MIT media lab, Prof. Alex Pentland, it is hard to difficult a fault in the team.
Holochain enables a distributed web with user autonomy built directly into its architecture and protocols. Data is about remembering our lived and shared experiences. Distributing the storage and processing of that data can change how we coordinate and interact. With digital integration under user control, Holochain liberates our online lives from corporate control over our choices and information. Holochain is an energy efficient post-blockchain ledger system and decentralized application platform that uses peer-to-peer networking for processing agent centric agreement and consensus systems between users. Holochain enables any device to have its own chain based ledger system. By using a holographic model for data storage and transfer developers can now create decentralized applications that can scale in multiple dimensions across a network ensuring they are truly distributed. This enables every device on a network to function independently, and only requires the synchronization of data when necessary, or agreed upon by users. This means every user is in control of their own data, and never has to risk their data being sold or exposed to 3rd parties like what just happened with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Holochain provides a framework for developers to build decentralized applications and aims to change the paradigm of data-centric blockchains to an agent-centric system. In Holochain’s fledgling system, no true global consensus is maintained. Instead, each agent in the public blockchain maintains a private fork, essentially, that is managed and stored in a limited way on the public blockchain with a distributed hash table. This means there are no scalability limits and dapps hosted on Holochain can do much more with less of nearly everything than traditional blockchains. This system however has some inherent weaknesses. Because the entire blockchain must be verified by each member of the network, scalability problems quickly develop. The larger the amount of data being handled, the more restrictive the limit of transactions per second that can occur on the blockchain at any one time.Holochain itself is open source and written in Go. Go was selected for its ease of use and similarity to C. Dapps written specifically for Holochain can be developed with JavaScript or Lisp, with support for front-end systems using CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. The developers added that Holochain is relatively flexible when it comes to handling new languages, so there is potential for growth on that front. Holochain bills itself as an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional blockchains. Because there is no need for each individual agent to store and validate the global blockchain, Holochain only consumes a fraction of the bandwidth of traditional chains. Holochain also does not have a mining component, so there’s no electricity or processing power spent on proof-of-work calculations. Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun are the co-founders of Holochain and creators of Holochain. They have been designing alternatives currencies since the 80’s and have been working on Holu since before the Bitcoin whitepaper was written. To protect the incentives of users, founders and developers, Holochain is owned by a non-profit foundation. he company’s advisory team also includes Ryan Bubinski, the co-founder of CodeAcademy. In June, Holochain announced a new strategic partnership with Promether, an Adaptive Symbiotic Platform (ASP) that implements all the networking, security and anonymization code applications need to protect their data.