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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 that 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 as far as to make it our very responsibility to predict the future. Moreso than just a responsibility, I would claim that those few visionaries who always seemed 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 proprietary distributed computing and as 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.
Image source: freeimages.com
Hardware epitomizes the 70's and the 80's. From Walkmans to VHS players to video game consoles, electronics were permeating the fabric of everyday life. Once the possessions of those nerdy few, these devices made their way into consumer hands. The concept of "personal" computers for the home also came around this time, along with the 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 advances 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.
image source: freeimages.com
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 manipulation.
This brings up the second of the two patterns we'll notice from history that can influence the next decade:
The decades marked mainly by a shift in computing concepts (such as the 90s and its internet) at its core enhanced the previous hardware limitations of individual computers.
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:
Though the first two points are hardware trends that persist through any decade, the latter two points are the main unique advancements of the 2000's.
Therefore, we still see another decade marked by hardware advancements. A similar pattern emerges as we saw in the 80's/90's.
Hardware advancement gives rises to a revolution in thinking of 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 one most crucial to our discussion about cryptocurrencies.
image source: freeimages.com
"The Cloud" exploded in the 2010's. From niche origins, the cloud evolved into an entity with which mobile phone owners across the world interact with. The cloud represented as much of a paradigm shift as the internet had. It allows people to back up their data seamlessly, effectively "rent" out processing power to run programs remotely, etc. It transcended individual machines by placing responsibility of machine upkeep and service provisions to centralized entities (Amazon, etc). These entities would serve as hosts, and people who would use their services would be known as clients.
Remote access and manipulation of data was once again king.
Perhaps unlike in previous decades, a sort of counter revolution began its roots in opposition to the cloud as we know it. Key to the concept of the cloud was centralization, a fact that meant some entity ultimately controlled the storage and processing as noted above. Arguable problems to the notion of centralization are:
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 miner. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that, pertaining to point one above about the cloud being weak to a single entity's failure, there is no single source of failure. In an ideal world, no one entity will have 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 independent several independent entities?
Trust and the Weaknesses of Blockchains
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?
Cryptocurrencies and other applications solve this problem by using blockchains. Blockchains are driven by consensus. Basically, one entities actions can be checked by other entities before the result of the first entity's work can be written too deeply onto the blockchain.
Blockchains, therefore, have to 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 handed off publicly?
Enigma's Secret Contracts as The Key to Practical, Decentralized Computing
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. 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 expanded capabilities of all the smart contract capable cryptocurrencies currently being developed. This unlocks the potential of distributed computing by:
Decentralized computing could be seen as revolutionary as the cloud. It expands markets. Its opens up clientele to 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, while bridging the last gap of security and privacy remaining in distributed computing.
A Farewell
The course of computing history has taken us from independent machines to interconnected ones, and this trend won't be going away anytime soon. Technologies like Enigma and its secret contracts will prove vital toward the decentralized 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 privacy. 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.
To learn more about Enigma, please visit https://enigma.co/
