Blockchains face two major issues
- Privacy
Data on the blockchain is accessible by anyone, making storing sensitive data impossible. This restricts the number of applications for blockchains.
- Scalability
Computing on the blockchain is too slow and expensive. Storing and computing over very large amounts of data on the blockchain is not feasible.
Enigma Solves Both
The promise of Enigma lies in its unique technology that protects privacy of data while still allowing for computation over that data.
Based on an MIT thesis, the Enigma protocol is a second-layer network that can work with any blockchain. Nodes in the Enigma network do not see the data they compute over, yet they can publicly prove that they have run a computation correctly. This opens the door for a new type of smart contracts.